Everything That Glitters
by chezchuckles
Summary: a Dash Companion. Working title for this one was 'Future/Adult Ellery' if that helps you at all with a summary. This one will be a longer story but not epic.
1. Chapter 1

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

**a Dash Companion**

_Everybody said you'd make it big some day_  
_And I guess that we were only in your way_  
_But some day I'm sure, you're gonna know the cost._  
_Because for everything you win there's something lost. . ._

_But as for me, I've come to know_  
_everything that glitters is not gold._

Everything That Glitters, Dan Seals

* * *

"You are-" the director thumbs-ups her across the set, "-without a doubt - the _Queen _of Stunts. Everyone - Ellery Queen."

She gives him back a thumbs up, beaming the effusive director her most winning smile, and then she turns around and snakes her way towards the dressing room with her weave itching like crazy and her clothes soaked through with water.

And the sound stage is - of course - freezing. She's going to have hypothermia before she makes it outside. She has a new and terrible appreciation for that story her dad always told when they were kids, the one that she and her brother never could quite believe to be real, but it has to be. Even Mom confirmed it was a Beckett story.

Because now Ellery sees that her dad described it all too well. Freezing. She is absolutely freezing. It makes her bones feel fragile but as solid as steel - a strange combination.

She's soaked through because they've done water stunts all day. From four this morning when she showed up for hair and make-up until - Ellery checks her watch and groans - eight o'clock tonight. And that's getting out early for this week.

It was _fun_ though. The huge tank, getting dunked repeatedly, pretending to kick her way out of a submerging car, saving the lead actor, the complicated underwater moves, the adrenaline rush. She's a junkie; she admits it.

Calculated risk. She's always loved it. Her dad says it's the Beckett in her, and her mom says it's the Castle. She doesn't care - the crazier, the better. Stunts have always done it for her.

The PA, Emily, catches up with her before she can quite make it out. "Ellery, sweetie, you did fabulous, as always. Perfect. You know, you're leading lady material. I don't know why you stick with stunts."

"I couldn't do stunts if I was lead," she says back automatically, the answer she always has for that throwaway line.

"You're gorgeous, you know. Those eyes would just pop on screen. Anyway, here's tomorrow's edits to the script. Here's the shooting schedule, and. . ."

Ellery takes the pages as she's given them, trying to keep them away from her wet clothes. The towel draped over her shoulders is soaked through as well, and she can't get the script wet or it'll fall apart. They're being so hush-hush about this episode.

"Oh, and you got a message. I didn't talk to the woman, someone else did." The PA hands her a bright pink _While You Were Out _message and Ellery closes her fingers around it, frowning. She doesn't have her phone on set, of course, but everyone knows her shooting schedule. Not like Nick would call her just to chat anyway.

"Thanks," she says absently, checking the message.

"Oh, you're shivering. Go, go, go. Don't let me keep you. I think the guys turned on the heater in your room."

"Oh, bliss," she moans and waves Emily off as she turns to go.

Ellery Castle - Ellery Queen to Hollywood - reads the message with growing concern as she hustles to the stunt trailer. She needs out of these clothes and the annoying weave_ off_, but first-

First she has to call Shannon.

What's going on? And why wouldn't Dashiell just call her himself?

* * *

When Shannon answers, Ellery jumps right in. As usual. "Shannon? What's wrong? Is it my brother? Did something happen to Dad?"

"What? Oh, no, Ellery. Your brother and your dad are fine."

"Is it-" Ellery sinks back against the door, throat tight. "Mom? Is Mom-"

"No! Oh, God. I've really - I'm so sorry. No, everyone is fine. Alexis is fine, the kids, everyone. I swear. I was just trying to reach you."

"I got a message from the PA."

"The. . .okay. I don't know who that is, but I called your room mate and he gave me the number of the lot?"

Ha, she called Nick. Oops. "Yeah, yeah, the main line. I guess someone took a message and it sounded - most people call my phone."

"I did that."

"I was on set since four this morning."

"Oh."

Ellery pushes off the door and runs a hand through her hair but it catches in the weave. She's trying not to be frustrated with her family - or almost family. Close enough. Dad calls Shannon his third daughter anyway. And with Alexis's kids to contend with, Ellery being in LA - with Meredith no less - probably doesn't put her high up on her father's list.

"I'm really sorry," Shannon says calmly. "I called your phone last week too though, and I never heard back. And it's - ah - kind of important. To me, at least."

"I've been shooting this tv show," Ellery starts.

"Oh, yes. Your dad's been talking about it. Raving. Writer and his muse, right? Cop show."

"Yeah," she says quietly, chewing on her bottom lip as she tugs at the hair woven through her own; it's loose at one end and despite feeling like a drowned rat, Ellery can't help trying to get it out first, before doing anything else. "Dad's been talking about it?"

"Of course. We're all pretty excited. I mean, yeah, we've seen every movie you've done but this is somehow more - I guess because Dad's convinced it's based on him."

Dad. Shannon calls him Dad?

"Okay, anyway. I'm rambling. But. This weekend. Can you come?"

"To New York?"

"I. . .you didn't get my message at all? From last week?"

Did she? Ellery can't remember. She must have. Oh, actually, Nick checks a lot of her email, her messages, and fills her in when she doesn't have time - and her schedule has been so crazy. . .

"Um. Ellery? Can you make it?"

"This weekend. New York. Uh, hold on a sec." Ellery fumbles with the shooting schedule the PA just handed her and flops it down against the counter, refuses to look at herself in the well-lit make-up mirror. Drowned rat. She already knows.

She flips through the pages until she finds the schedule and lets out a low breath. "Yes. Awesome. Yes, I'm free this weekend. What's up?"

"Just - you know - most life-changing event ever."

"Oh, _shit_. Match Day," she moans, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Dash told me and I totally forgot. I'm a terrible sister."

"No," Shannon breathes out. "No, just farther away than we'd like. But - well, yes. That's it. Match Day."

But Ellery Castle has been working in Hollywood long enough to know there's more, that the stutter to Shannon's voice and the strain as she said _that's it_ reveals more than anticipation and anxiety over where her brother is getting placed after med school.

There's excitement. Something is going on.

"So. . that's it, huh?" Ellery asks, glancing up and curling her nose at her reflection. "All right. I'll bite. This weekend. I'll fly in Friday afternoon."

"And keep it a secret? Don't tell your family."

Hmm, this is getting better and better. "Can do."

"Thanks, Ellery. Thank you."

Ellery opens her mouth to add, _Oh, and I've got to bring Nick to meet the parents at some point and don't mention that either because I kinda forgot to tell anyone_ but Shannon has already ended the call.

Huh.

Well, looks like it's time for Ellery Castle to go home.

* * *

The loft is always like this, at least as far back as Ellery can remember. Laughter, loudness, voices, things going on. But she's still out here, standing in the hallway. She even told Jorges not to buzz her up, and she would use her key, but now she can't take that last step.

She knocks instead.

The music of the room - all that laughter and brightness - only dims a little, and she can finally pick out the thread of her father's voice as it comes closer.

"Come on, Kate. Live a little. You'll love it; I swear."

And the door wrenches open, it's been warped by the years, and her father's face is in profile, that crooked half-smile directed towards the kitchen, and then his head turns to the hallway and to Ellery standing, breathless, waiting.

It's like a story. It always is.

He drops the dish towel and his face deepens into that brilliant, eye-crinkling, joyful smile as he reaches out and grabs her in for a back-breaking hug.

"Ella Kate," he gruffs out, eyes suspiciously wet through the grin, his grip so fierce. And then he turns a little, her still in his arms, and calls back to the kitchen. "Look, I found a cricket."

Ellery laughs and wraps her arms around him, buries her face in his neck. She's forgotten how tall she is, how he's not the big bear of her memory, swallowing her up in his arms, but he still can make her feel small and precious.

She breathes him in, the fresh hint of Italian spices and then his familiar, day-worn cologne, and she huffs a laugh as he squeezes tighter and picks her up off her feet, shaking her a little as they stand in the entry.

"Okay, my turn," Ellery hears and her father is dropping her back to the ground. She turns her head from the comfort of her dad's broad chest and sees her mother standing a few paces off, eyes warm, a hint of a smile, looking thinner than Ellery remembers but still stunning.

"_Mama_." The Croatian pops out of her, as it always does the moment she sees her mother.

"Castle, let her go," she chides and takes a step towards them. "Or at least let her breathe."

"No, not yet."

Ellery laughs and glances up at her father's happy face, feels his embrace across her shoulders, her spine popping as he lifts her up once more. "Dad. I'm here all weekend. Now let me go."

"You Becketts never want to _hug_-"

"I'm a Castle too," she murmurs, giving his cheek a soft kiss. "Drop me now and I'll dogpile later."

"How later is later?"

"I'm interrupting this hostage negotiation," her mom laughs, tugging on her father's arm and sending Ellery back to her feet. She turns and waits a moment, just a small hesitation, silly really, but her mother is already gathering her up, a hand cradling the back of Ellery's head, a kiss at her temple.

"Ella," her mother murmurs, and with such pleasure it tumbles right through her. "Hey, my baby girl."

Her heart clenches as her mother tightens the hug, and Ellery grips fistfuls of her mother's shirt, swallowing hard to keep it all down.

Her mother's kiss brushes over her ear. "Šta god da uradiš neće me natjerati da te prestanem voljeti."

_Nothing you do can ever make me stop loving you._

And Ella has so needed to hear it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

Her mother sits on the couch, waiting for her to join, and Ellery takes a hesitant step forward, still unable to believe she's really here.

"Where's your stuff?" her mother asks.

But Dad is knocking into her elbow and heading for the kitchen. "Want some wine, cricket?"

Jeez, the old nicknames. "No, Daddy. I'm a straight edge."

"A straight edge?" he mutters, narrowing his eyes at her. "Like that pitcher?"

She searches back, but baseball is Dash's thing, and she's grown apart from the game the last few years. "It's just where you - you know - no caffeine, no alcohol, no drugs."

"No caffeine?" her mother says from the couch. "I'd never make it. Are you vegan now too?"

"No, mom, just the substances," she says, feeling defensive all over again, thirteen and facing down her toughest critic. Her mother. "And I'm not hardcore. It's just a way to keep my body in shape, make sure the substances aren't the things in control. I have to be in control with my job."

Her mother gives her a sighing little smile. "That's Dad's question out of the way. Now answer mine. You said here for the weekend, so where's your stuff?"

"No one can interrogate like you, mama," she mutters, rolling her eyes and flopping down on the couch. "Dad, get me some water."

"No one can order us around like you, cricket," her father says back, but he's already in the kitchen, getting her water.

"Us?" her mother calls back. "Just you, babe. She's got you wrapped around her finger."

"It's the Beckett women. They do it to me every time."

"I think my mother would've just scared the crap out of you," she calls back, grinning slyly at Ellery and including her in the teasing.

"She would have - but that's the same thing, really. _You_ scared the crap out of me at first too."

"Couldn't tell," her mother mutters, rolling her eyes now too.

Ella's heart is just beating out of her chest; she's missed this so much. The authenticity of her parents - normal people in the midst of all the fake and the smiles of Hollywood. No one in her industry ever seems to be honest, and Ellery is just too direct for most of them. She steps on toes. She's too much.

"Ella, you still haven't said."

She winces and takes the glass her father is offering her, but she sees that for all his outward enthusiasm, he still has that inner core of quiet waiting. Because of her. They both got to looking like that before she left - wary and wondering what she might do next.

"Um, well, I have stuff. But it's at the hotel."

"What?" her father says immediately, his hand coming down over her knee and squeezing. "No. Absolutely not. You stay in your room."

"Sounds like old times, Daddy. Getting punished and staying in my room."

He gives her a half-grin for the attempt, but it's her mother who gets it first. And she's chuckling, that humming noise in her throat that means she's got something over on Dad and is so pleased with it.

"Castle, I think if she stays in her old room, she's having a sleepover."

"Fine. More the merrier. Is it Ava from - oh, when was that? Tenth grade? I liked her. I wonder what she's doing now."

"She's at Cal Polytech. But no, Dad-"

Her mother laughs. "Rick, a _boy._"

"A - what?"

Ellery shoots a glare at her mother for goading him and then turns back to her father and slides her arm through his, cuddling close. "Daddy, he's-"

"Why haven't I even _heard_ of him? How important can he be if I haven't heard of him?"

She shifts back, drops his arm, pulls her bottom lip into her teeth as she stands back up. Should've done this differently, she can see that now, but. . .how to salvage what remains? "Dash gets matched this weekend for his residency and I wanted to be here for that, and I wanted. . .to see you guys again. I. . ." She turns her head and frowns at the front door.

"Ignore him," her mother says quickly, standing and putting her glass of wine on the coffee table, coming around to block her father from Ellery. "Ignore him totally and completely. We just want you here. Want you, baby girl, and all your luggage and your boy and everything. Come here."

Jeez, she's three years old again, but she doesn't even care; Ella pitches forward into her mom and wraps her arms around those slender, strong shoulders - the build and frame she carries like a twin but has never been able to measure up to, never been able to even get close to being the same.

"He loves you?" her father is saying over her mom's shoulder, and then she feels him tug on them both, and they go crashing into his chest, Ellery laughing through what are _not_ tears, not at all.

"He's a New Yorker," she says carefully. How do you explain to your father that you've met a man who can't - won't - say the words? A man who won't plan past tomorrow but whose dreams all include her and this city? "He wants us to move back."

"You're living with him."

She groans and buries her eyes against her mother's neck, feels her mom swat at her dad, shoo him away. "Castle, what did I tell you about Alexis? You did it once before; you can do it again."

Her mother's fingers trail through her hair, pull it away from her neck, her embrace just as it's always been - loose, strong, at any moment ready to give Ella space and stand on her own.

Which she does, and she's not crying even now; she feels better for the way her mother looks at her, the way she defends her against her father's melodramatics.

"Thanks, _mama_."

"All the ways."

It comes so naturally, so effortlessly, that her chest grows tight with it - how the loves just radiates from them. Even her dad, who clearly isn't happy about living arrangements with a boy he's never even heard of can't seem to suppress the joy at having her here.

She can't remember exactly why she's stayed away.

"So where is _he_ then?" her mother asks. "Call him. Bring him over. Stay in your room, cricket."

Ella lifts a wondering look to her father, but he's defeated. Already. He sighs at her, at them both really, and Ellery realizes that her mother's goading him actually _worked_. Is this how it's always been? Her father's drama has always been incited against them - she and Dash - since she could remember, but maybe that whole time it was her mother's way of getting it out of his system?

Oh, wow. Mom is _wicked_.

"I'll text him. Tell him to come," she says finally.

"And his name?" her father grouses.

She laughs, that brilliant and sharp feeling rising up in her again at the thought of her two worlds colliding. "Nick. His name's Nick and he's. . .Daddy, he's a writer."

* * *

As she waits for Nick to show up with their bags, Ella prowls through her parents' loft, the home she grew up in and somehow can't get out of her system. She has this dream - recurring since she was small - about discovering treasures in her father's study, little items that she loves so much that the joy when she finds them again is almost more than she can bear.

As Ellery runs her fingers along her father's bookshelves, skimming over dust and his collectible typewriters, she finds herself confronted with one of those imagined treasures.

She's always thought it was just a dream.

Ella curls her fingers over the purple elephant, confusion and wonder knitting her eyebrows, and she gives a little laugh, presses it against her chest. That feeling is still there, like being given something back she thought was hopelessly lost, and she cradles the purple elephant in her hand and can't imagine leaving without it.

She'll just -

Well, she'll ask her mother. She's the one with all the elephants, so it must have been hers at one point. Before Ellery took it when she was little, and lost it, and never found it again until today.

Ella hears them making dinner in the kitchen, laughing with each other, her mother teasing and her father defending himself, and even though her dad's over sixty and her mother in her fifties, they look the same as the photo on her father's desk - at least to Ella. Dashiell is maybe eight in this picture, standing on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips while Ellery is walking the concrete retaining wall like a tightrope, straight into her father's arms.

Her mother is there, pushing her hair back from her face and sitting on the wall, apparently where Ella just came from, but Ellery has no memory of the moment captured on film. Probably Allie or Rafe, maybe Papa. Papa is always around; Ellery talks to Papa probably once a week. He says he does for her what he couldn't do for her mother until it was nearly too late.

Ella has no idea what that means, what burden of the past her grandfather carries, but it's always made her feel connected to her mother, made her feel that their likeness is more than just skin deep.

She goes behind her father's desk to run her fingers over the books, The Books, and she can repeat the titles by heart. Her mother put them in order according to which ones she liked the best, and then Ellery read them when she was nine and rearranged their order.

And they're still in that order.

By color. And within the color, she arranged them by how impressed she was with the main character. Ella laughs and pushes in _Naked Heat_, biting her bottom lip. All the others, the stories of her parents' life together, collected on a dusty shelf.

Just as she's about to turn, her eyes catch on the very next item shelved after her father's books. She blinks hard and can't believe what she's seeing.

It's her movies. All the movies she's ever been in - some even uncredited - and the television shows she's stunt doubled on. Wow. Her parents have _everything_.

Everything. All of it. And shelved right after her father's novels like they matter - like it's her _work_ and it is, it's her work, but to give them the same weight as her father's books. Her parents' life together. Why?

Her phone vibrates and she clenches the little elephant against her chest, pulls the phone out to answer it. Nick's face on her screen with that one raised eyebrow, sitting back in the seat across from her at that place on the coast where they had the best fish she's ever put in her mouth and-

And she answers, her shoulders ease. "Hey, Nicky."

"I hate it when you call me that."

"Can't help it. Standing in front of my dad's books."

"Highly unfortunate," he sighs.

"Where are you?"

"Hanging out with Paul and Patel. Thought I'd give you some time."

"You're not coming?"

"I am. Just gonna leave you to it. Pave the way for us, Ellie."

"Well, thanks," she says dryly. What's she supposed to do now? Tell her parents? "Um, when?"

"A couple hours? Patel's got new open-source script software and he's actually tweaked it so we don't have to use the control keys. . .Never mind. You don't need to hear my geek talk - not sexy."

She laughs and smirks into the phone. "Hmm, definitely think you're way hotter when you geek out over surfing. Wind conditions. Currents."

"Not much surf in New York," he sighs. "What am I gonna do?"

"That's one problem with your 'Dream'," she points out.

"It can be overcome. Give me time. Ooh, hey! I bet someone surfs in the Hudson."

"Somehow, Nick, that's not quite so hot."

She hears commotion on his end and then a laugh from him that has nothing to do with their conversation. She sighs and listens to him messing with one of his old friends - high school friends both of them - waiting until she gets his attention again.

"Hey, Ellie. Look. I want you to have some time to get all the awkward out, okay? Takes you forever to crack open. I'll get there in a few hours, be your knight in shining armor, rescue you-"

"Whatever," she growls out. "You go play with your computer."

He laughs on the other end and this time it's for her. "There's my girl."

"Not really your girl either, Nick James."

"Not yet anyway."

And then he hangs up on her.

She huffs and pushes her phone in her pocket then realizes someone is in the room, listening. Ellery spins around to find her mother.

She's got two fingers against her closed lips, a smile ghosting her face, amusement in her eyes.

Ellery clenches her fist but she won't drop her gaze; she'll do battle, she really will. She'll _fight_ for it.

Whatever it is.

Because it's not funny.


	3. Chapter 3

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

"Ellery?"

She hunches her shoulders. Of course her mother would choose this moment to walk in on her. Never fails. "Just looking at Dad's books. You guys have my stuff."

Her mother seems to be willing to let go of the phone conversation for now. "Have your - oh, the movies? Of course. I love them. Well, I could be biased. But baby girl-"

Ellery shoots her mother a look at the name and they both smile, pressed lips and raised eyebrows, and Ella sees it now. She does. She's exactly like her mother but with her father's rounder face, her father's blue eyes. Everything else is the same.

"Baby girl," her mother repeats, shaking her head slowly, insisting on it. "You are impressive."

"Yeah?" It startles out of her mouth before she can stop it.

"Ellery," her mother chides, coming into the study on those quiet, quick feet. Ellery's inherited those from her too. "We're proud of you."

"But I - I ran off and ditched college and I avoided everything you guys had set up for me."

Her mother's arm comes around her shoulders and tugs her into her side. "I'll admit that I can't say that I felt, at the time, that moving into Meredith's place was the best idea I'd ever heard. . ."

Ella laughs and pushes her nose into her mother's shoulder. "Meredith. Wow. You have no idea."

"Oh but, sweetheart, I do."

She laughs harder and lifts her head, eyes her mother's knowing look. "Yeah, okay. I'm sure you do. I was calling Allie every other night asking for help with just how to _deal_ with Meredith."

"Mm, I know. Allie told us."

"She did? Oh, well she kept telling me I was crazy to trade you in for her mother. She said she traded up to you the moment she got the chance."

Her mother actually blushes, crooking an eyebrow at Ellery, but Ella won't pretend otherwise. She's spent the last five years wishing her mother would call and they could talk like Allie always claims her mother is more than capable of, but they're the same, the two of them. Too much the same.

Neither of them called. "Mom, I want. . ."

Ellery struggles with it, trying to find words for it, but there aren't words. There never are when she needs them. Dashiell has always been her spokesman, the Aaron to her Moses, and she knows if he was here, he would know exactly what to say.

"Ella," her mother breathes out. And then her mother's arms are around her and drawing her into a hug, petting her hair and holding her tightly, and it's the second - the third? - absolutely perfect and necessary embrace she's gotten in the last two hours and she hasn't been hugged like this in five years.

Nick's not much of a hugging person, _she's_ not a hugging person, and neither is her mother, she used to think, and this is. . .

"Ella Kate," her mother whispers. "Ella. What's the matter? What's going on?"

"Nothing. Nothing. I just-" She growls and pulls back, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. She just wants. . .home. She's tired of never being home.

"Ellery, you don't need the excuse of a boy or Dash's Match Day to come home. Maybe I let you think. . .I didn't want to do to you what my mom did to me, and so maybe I didn't fight hard enough for you."

"What do you mean?" she asks, dropping her hands, feeling horrified. "Mommom did what to you?"

Her mother gives that crooked smile, that hurting smile, but she runs her fingers through Ellery's hair and arranges it around her shoulders. "Baby, I fought like crazy with my mother. I went to Stanford to escape her."

Ellery can't help it; she presses her lips together to stop it, but the laugh bubbles out, breathless. "Oh yeah? California, huh?"

Her mother's lips twitch. "Sure enough."

"And then?"

"She died," her mom says, shrugging. "Changed my whole life. And with my mom gone, Ellery, I don't have a pattern for this anymore. With you guys, I modeled myself after her, but she was gone when I was nineteen. So now you're twenty-three and I have no idea what comes next, what I'm supposed to do. Flying blind here, _svraka_."

Ella sits down hard on the edge of the desk, staring at her mother. She's never thought of it before; it's never occurred to her to _ask_ and she should've known. She's always known. She's been the one to know. Dashiell talks, but Ellery listens.

"You don't. . .I just. . ."

"Too much?" her mother winces, glancing away.

"No!" Ellery hops back up, clenches her fists as her mother shoots her a startled look. "No. I mean. I want to know this stuff. I've missed you guys and I thought you didn't want me back unless I-"

"Didn't want you _back?"_ her mother gapes. "Back from _what_? Where are you back from - California? That's just geography. That's nothing." Her mother reaches out and grabs the nape of Ella's neck, tugs her in again. "That's _nothing_. Do you hear me? If you want to live in California and be a stunt woman until you break every bone in your body-"

"I haven't broken a single bone," she huffs. "I have a perfect record."

"Perfect record, of course. What I'm saying is - I don't care. Distance is nothing. Daddy and I can get on a plane and be anywhere you are, baby, you just let me know. You just have to let me know. I didn't want to follow where you didn't want me."

"But I figured - Dash is here-"

"Dash doesn't need me more than you need me. You are both mine."

She takes in a dark breath, lets it out to dispel the shadows clogging her lungs. "Yeah."

"There's no need to take you back when I never let you go," her mother says softly, her arm so tight around Ellery's neck that she can't move away. "No need to take you back when you have always been right here."

Ella tries to laugh but her throat chokes up. "Shit, mother. Don't make me cry."

"Don't curse at me. Say you love me and let's go eat dinner."

"I love you. You know I love you, right? I really do, and I know I've been no good at letting you know, and terrible at calling and keeping you involved in my life-"

"You've talked with Dash, sweetheart. And as you well know, Dash tells us everything. Dashiell's always been the one to talk for you, baby girl. I never expected it to change."

A voice rings out. "Girls! Chop, chop. Spaghetti is getting cold. What are you two doing?"

And then her father, with his smiling eyes, is coming through the doorway to hustle them into the dining room.

* * *

"He's taking his time," Ella says quietly, glancing over at her mother even though it was her dad who asked. "He loves the city, all his friends are here, so he'll join us later."

"You didn't warn him off, did you?" her father laughs. "I can be good, I swear."

"Did Papa act like you when you met him for the first time?" she says back, wrinkling her nose and avoiding his question. Because, no, it's not that she's warned him off. More like Nick warned her. _Take your time._

"I had the advantage. Papa didn't know I was hot for your mom when we first met." Her dad grins that beaming smile and shoots a glance across the table at her mother. She used to think that was so gross, seeing them all into each other, but now. . .

Okay, still a little gross. But her mom seems to blossom under his looks, like she's usually this closed off, tight bud of herself and then when he looks at her like that, she breaks open. Just for him.

Well, her mom opens for Dash like that too. The two of them used to have all those mornings together while Ellery couldn't drag herself out of bed, and so much happened in those hours before school, all kinds of information and experience and knowledge that Ella got passed secondhand from her brother instead.

But she's being unfair. She's falling back into her restless, teenaged self. She's not that girl - the one who can't understand why she doesn't fit but just knows it's got to be her parents' fault for just not paying attention. Distance brings perspective, of course, and even now, as her mother turns her face back to Ellery, she sees that bright and unfurling love shining there still.

For her.

It probably always has been.

"That's what you think, Castle. He knew what you were doing, hanging around me for years and years, trying to get in my pants. But, Ella, your dad had also been my partner at the 12th, so it gave him some credit, despite that."

Ellery rolls her eyes and glances at her father. "You old lecher."

"I wasn't that old. I mean. Okay, I'm significantly older than your mom, but-"

"Not significant, Castle," her mother murmurs. "Otherwise you'd have acted mature instead of like the hyper nine year old who has to be put in the corner."

"Did you literally put him in a corner?" Ella grins. "Because I wish I could've been there to see that."

"Once, I did. But you know the boys - most of the time, they teased him mercilessly, kept him in his place."

"Oh, Uncle Kevin and Tio," she sighs, warmth suffusing her. "I haven't even - where _are_ they?"

"They're around," her mother smiles. "You know Ian is half in love with you."

"Oh, jeez."

"No more talk about boys half in love with you," her father grumbles. "Where's dessert?"

"Smooth, Daddy," she laughs, standing up and taking her empty plate. She curls her arm around his neck from behind and leans in to brush a kiss over his cheek. "I'll serve. Ice cream?"

"Beautiful, brilliant daughter," he hums back, one hand raising to cup her jaw. "See, Kate? Cricket's going to let me have ice cream."

"Let you?" Ella murmurs, glancing to her mother, lifting up from her dad a little. "You're not supposed to have ice cream, Daddy?"

"I can have ice cream. Don't you start. Kate, stop looking at her like that."

She hesitates, but her mother nods her on, wordless, and then levels that gaze back on her father. Uh-oh. They're going to have words - wordless words - and so Ellery gathers her father's plate and gets out of there.


	4. Chapter 4

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

It's ice cream on the couch like old times, only it's just Ellery and her parents watching the Doctor Who marathon - no Dash, no Allie and Rafe, or later their girls cuddled in as well. She remembers being so small that she could curl up on top of her dad's chest and gaze adoringly at the Doctor on screen, probably about as in love with him as Ian was with her, come to think of it.

Now she's twenty-three and all of them are too tall for cuddling quite like that, but she fits nicely between them on the couch, her dad's arm thrown over the back so that Ellery can rest against his side, her ear listening to his heart. She knows that his fingers are on her mom's neck, stroking, she knows that if Dash were here they'd be involved in some convoluted, philosophical debate that would eventually pull them all away from the dog pile and down deep into Dash's complex world.

She loves her brother so much it aches. Loves what he does for her, how he makes the world into this place where so much is possible, anything really, and if she could just stay there, just dwell there, she would never worry about all these stupid things.

She used to take care of him. She used to be the one to tell him when to watch out and where to go and why someone was mad at him. She used to be the one who steered him away from the pillar he was about to run into, the one who stayed up late at night and explained why Jessie had broken up with him.

It used to be Ellery's job, but somewhere along the line, Dashiell started figuring it out for himself. Started learning from her and anticipating people's reactions and cataloging all the faces someone could have for _leave me alone_, and Ella wasn't quiet so necessary anymore.

"What a sigh," her father says with a laugh, reaching across to tweak her ear. "Stop thinking so much, Ellery."

She grins against his chest and tilts her head back to see him. "Spoken by a man who truly knows-"

"Great, you've turned into your mother," he says flatly. But Ellery is stunned to see _pride_ radiating out of his eyes.

"Mom catches bad guys," she says, the old phrase so well-worn that it comes out of her mouth like a conditioned response. "I'm not exactly my mother."

"But you kinda catch bad guys," her mom says. She's been close on the couch this whole time, her arm twined through Ellery's, their knees bumping, and now she takes Ella's hand. "That movie with the motorcycle stunt. You were a bounty hunter."

"Pretend criminals don't exactly count," Ella says, rolling her eyes and sitting up a little. "You defuse bombs and stop serial killers and I jump off the back of a truck and roll in the dirt."

"It's pretty kick-ass either way," her dad muses. "You make up your own stunts?"

Ella hides her smile into his shoulder, but she shrugs.

"I bet you do. Hey, remember how you used to stand on my shoulders and flip off?"

"Shh," she laughs, cutting her eyes to Mom. "That's supposed to be our secret."

"Don't think for a second I didn't know about that," her mother says, an eyebrow arched in that fierce way that has always made Ellery's heart stop beating.

She lets out a little shaky breath when she sees the smirk flirting on her mom's lips, and she grins a little wider. "Yeah, but what about the time that Dashiell and I jumped from the balcony?"

Her mom startles upright. "What?"

Ella laughs, delighted at having some secrets. "Remember when you guys made that seating area just under the stairs when Sophie was really little?"

"You didn't do this while she was _here_, did you?"

"Um." She darts a look to her father and reads the look there. "I plead the fifth."

"Ellery Kate Castle!"

"It was - okay, but we didn't _let_ her jump off. Only us. Me and Dash."

"You jumped off the landing at the top of the stairs all the way down to - to what? A couch down there?"

"Well, we pushed the two couches together and we dropped rolls of toilet paper so we could tell where to aim so we wouldn't miss."

"Wouldn't miss," her father repeats, something in his voice that makes Ella turn around and look at him. His face looks a little chalky.

"Oh, wow. You really didn't know. Okay, well, there are probably a thousand other things I shouldn't tell you either."

"Why are you spilling secrets now?" her mother growls.

"Dash told me last week the statue of limitations has run out on everything done before we were twelve."

Her father groans and rubs a hand down his face. "This is because he told us about smoking that cigarette."

Ella nods, chewing her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from laughing. "He was shaky for days after that too. He thought for sure you guys would find out - you especially, Mom - and he was sick with it."

"He really was sick," her mom mutters. "He stayed home from school, little punk. Dash - of all people - does not need to be inhaling an addictive stimulant. If anyone in this family should be a straight edge, it's him."

"Yeah, so I figured-"

Her father cuts in. "Wait, when was this? The couch jumping?"

"I was. . .nine? No, wait. Sophie was an only child at the time. So I was eight."

Her mother's indignation is - hopefully - equal parts horrified and amused. "Sophie saw you two jump," she says.

"Like Sophie would ever - in a million years - try to copy them," her father snorts. "Sophie's got Alexis's tender heart and easily pricked conscience. No way."

"And where were _you_, Castle? You were Daddy daycare back then."

Ella closes her mouth and gives her dad wide eyes, struggling to remember how exactly they'd been so unsupervised. Dash was only ten, Sophie nearly three, so someone should've been watching them.

Oops. "Sorry, Daddy."

"Betrayed. Utterly betrayed."

"I think I remember Dad writing," she says, giving her mother a hopeful look. "A lot. Wasn't that the year he came out with the third series. Sophie's picture books?"

"Yes, yes, exactly. I was doing those pictures books for Soph. I can't be held responsible for-" He stops, narrows his eyes. "Huh. I. . .let's move past this. All's well that ends well, right?"

But her mother is looking at her funny, that calculating look that means Ellery is either in big trouble because Mom _knows_, or she's figured something out that she's been wondering for years.

"Ella," she says softly. "We skipped you."

Shit, her Mom is _scary._ Scary good at this. But it wasn't really like she got _skipped._

She shrugs her shoulders. "No. I'm in Felix."

"Castle," her mom says, shooting her father a fierce look that - that looks _grief_-filled. "Rick, I told you to put that idea on hold because it didn't seem fair, but actually - God, actually, we skipped right over Ellery."

"What? Skipped what?" He clutches her shoulder tighter, as if protecting her from something, but Ella shakes her head.

"Really, guys. I'm fine." _Idea on hold?_

"That's why you jumped off the balcony. Dash always went because you did; he never had an idea like that on his own. It was always you instigating things and this time-"

"It was all my idea," she readily admits, hoping to drag the conversation away from the raw places. "I always had great ideas."

"What did we _skip_?" her father cuts in, his voice with an edge of worry. "And I told you I should've gone ahead and done that one-"

"With the books. All the kids have their own series, but Ella's just - she's only-"

"Oh." Her father's face blanches. "Oh, God."

Her chest tightens and she twists in the couch to wrap her arms around him, press her kiss to his cheek. "No, Daddy. No. I'm Chandler, remember? And Chandler kicks ass too."

"Ella," he gets out, like an apology. "I never. . .it never seemed. . ."

"This explains so much," her mother is murmuring, and _damn it_, she always does this. She always thinks she's figured everyone and everything out and knows exactly how things will go, but not this.

"No. It doesn't _explain_ anything. I was always going to jump off the balcony. Just because Sophie got a book and Dad was busy writing it doesn't mean I wouldn't be exactly here. I'm here because this is who I am. I was always this, I've always been this, you just refuse to _see_ me."

Her mother is grabbing her, tugging her into that not-too-tight embrace even as her father releases his crushing grip to let her go. Her mother and the words in her ear and the smell of her hair and neck that always seem to haunt her.

"Okay, okay. That's enough, Ellery." The fingers at her cheek, pushing her hair back. "You're twenty-three. You're too old for this kind of tantrum. Be stubborn. Be mulish and know your mind and be confident - that's me too. But throwing a fit doesn't help."

She grits her teeth together because her mother is _right_, and that makes it worse, and somehow better too, and she pulls back from them both, sitting up straight in the couch and pressing the heel of her hand into one eye.

"I'm fine. I don't need my own series - I was in Felix, Daddy. That's me and Dash, together. I like being with Dash; it's always been him and me."

"You're a good sister," her father says softly. "With some inconsistent grammar. But actually."

Her mother is stroking the hair back from her face, arranging it, and the _actually_ sparks this strange feeling in her chest as she looks intently at her father.

He grins. "I had an idea."

"What?"

"Mom told me to wait; we didn't know if you'd be okay with it."

"Okay with what?"

"But I've already written three chapters and the character sketch is solid and she's dynamic and impressive and Kate even likes her better than _Nikki_, which is-"

"Mom?" Ellery turns to her mother for the explanation, no change there, and her mom's face is both hesitant and hopeful.

"Your Dad wants to write a book - with a character based on you."

"_What_?"

"She's a stunt woman. By day. And by night-"

"Not a stripper," Ella says, narrowing her eyes at him.

Her mom laughs so loud that the sound cracks a smile onto Ella's face as well, and she doesn't even know what she's smiling about. Now her mother is practically wiping away tears, and her dad is giving her that look that means there's some joke between them in their own little world, and Ellery is amazed to realize that it doesn't make her feel left out anymore.

She's in that world. She _is_ that world.

How has she not seen that before?

"No, not a stripper," her father says petulantly. "But a super hero."

"What?" she laughs, but her amusement fades at the look on their faces - both of them. "A super hero? I'm a super hero?"

"Yeah, baby girl. You are."


	5. Chapter 5

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

Her father sits Ellery down in the chair behind his massive, handsome desk and she feels like the Queen of her namesake all over again, holding court from a place of honor. She has memories of sneaking into the study while Dad was supposed to be writing and curling up in the footwell with her latest stolen treasure, listening to the rainfall of her father's keystrokes.

When he brings out his laptop tonight, he leans over her shoulder to touch the screen and call up a publisher program that she's never seen before.

"Is that new?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Something I had to drag BP into kicking and screaming."

She grins at him, his cheek right there next to hers, so she kisses him, warm with the chuckle of affection he gives her as he gets to whatever it is he's looking for. Mom is still out in the kitchen cleaning up their ice cream bowls, maybe purposefully giving her a moment alone with her father, and look how handsome he is, how big and strong, how much her little girl's heart still yearns for him.

He's older now, but he's so much the same. The only lines on his face are the distinguished ones from smiling, and his hair is salt and pepper but still thick and styled just right. Everything so familiar, so warm and softened with the touch of memories.

She's forgotten all that, somewhere along the way, how he makes the world sunny for them. How having his cheek to kiss or his hug after a day at school or those ridiculous breakfast concoctions, the all-weekend laser tag competitions, the driving lessons in the Ferrari when Mom was at work. . .having all that made life brighter, easier somehow.

"I missed you, Daddy," she murmurs. She hasn't called him _daddy_ so much since that terrible night at junior prom when he had to come pick her up at the hotel downtown. And tonight - all that seems to want to come out of her mouth is that soft baby name she had for him for so long as a child, even when Dashiell teased her, even when _mommy_ switched to _mama_.

She gets a loose hug from him in return and that contented hum, but his eyes are fixed on the laptop and then he crows in triumph as the image fills the screen.

"Oh, wow." She stares at her father's work and a rush of humility clenches in her chest. "You've already made cover art?"

"Yeah. This program - the publisher - it's fantastic. It will do everything and I have that photo of you on the motorcycle from when Mom and I went out to LA with Allie and Sophie, and it was a matter of adjusting some levels and voila."

"Just like that, huh?" She laughs, raising an eyebrow. "Right. So who taught you?"

Her father grumbles but gives it up soon enough. "It was Sophie. Whatever. She works part-time in the art department and - okay, yes, I called her twice to help me with this, but I still made it."

Ella presses her lips together but the laugh tumbles out. She leans her cheek to his but she can't stop looking at the cover art for her father's new series.

"What's her name?" she says quietly. "Did Mom name my character like she did Chandler?"

"Well, just like originally - I named you."

Ellery grins wider and bites her bottom lip to keep it back, reaches out to touch the screen. Her hair is flying out from under the helmet - all black - and the visor is tinted so no part of her face is showing (she was a stunt double on a movie set here) - and she's hunched over the handlebars of a Ducati Sport in black leather, chrome zippers to match the tail pipe.

Pretty hot. It's one of Nick's favorite photos of her too. He blew it up and touched it with spots of green in the grass, a hint of green for her shirt, and it hangs in their living room over the couch. But her father hasn't done too bad a job with it either.

She turns to him. "What did you mean about naming me - like originally?"

He elbows her shoulder, making her lurch to one side, and she laughs and shoves him back only to get a tug on her hair and her father rolling the chair out and back, jostling her.

"How can you not remember this story? I named you when you were born. It was my turn."

"Oh, I remember that," she laughs. "I just didn't make the connection. Okay, so Mom didn't name this one. What _is_ her name? Come on, stop prolonging the agony."

"Didn't make the connection," he mutters, narrowing his eyes at her in that melodramatic way he has. Like she should be ashamed. "Her name's - well it's pretty close to yours, so Mom said you get veto rights-"

"Just _tell_ me already."

"Emma," he blurts out. "Emma Steele."

Ellery studies the cover art, the black leather and the bad-ass attitude and the bike. And what she loves about it, and always has, is how her father's quick and inexpert photograph has caught the snake and tangle of her hair flying away from the helmet, that one touch of femininity in all the hardness.

"Ellery?"

She turns to her father and wraps her arms around his neck. "I love it. It's perfect."

"Yeah?" he breathes out. "Yeah. Awesome." He hugs her harder and then lifts his head, talking over her shoulder. "She loves it. I told you she would. Just like Ella - strong and sweet."

It's her mother that answers him, apparently having come into the study on those quiet feet.

"You were right, Castle. Just like our girl."

* * *

Ellery and her mom have moved back out to the living room when she realizes what she meant to ask about.

"Oh," Ella says, feeling the knot of ceramic in her pocket. She stands up from the couch and pulls out the purple elephant with a blush. "I took this. Or no, I mean, I saw it on the shelf and I was going to ask-"

Her mother laughs, her face wide open with it, and lifts her hand for the figurine. "Just like old times, baby girl? Stealing my stuff."

Ella blushes harder and hands it over, sinking onto the couch once more as her mother fingers the little animal. "Sorry. I wasn't-"

"You remember doing that? When you were little. And we'd have to negotiate for our things - keys or my phone or that necklace your father gave me."

"The one with the fat blue stone? I love that necklace. I took it?"

"Mm, you did. Repeatedly. Only thing Dad really didn't like - he gave it to me as an anniversary gift."

"Well, I put most of it in Dad's study, under the bookshelves. You knew that, right? I can't remember."

"We knew, but you got so upset if we took it back from there that we had to let you go get it yourself."

Ellery rolls her eyes and flops back into the couch, her body falling a little closer to her mother's, leaning in. Her father is back in his study right now, excited over the book and back at work on it after apologizing with a kiss to her forehead and that distraction in his eyes.

She's used to it - she remembers calling his name over and over as a petulant five year old, waiting for him to lift his eyes and give her his attention. He always did; he never failed to hear her - but it was like dragging him back.

"I'm sorry. What a pain in the ass I was."

"Was?"

She stutters on a laugh as her mother smirks, flicks her mom's kneecap with her fingers. "Meanie. I'm not even back six hours and you're at it."

"You missed me."

"I did." For a lot longer than five years spent in LA finding her way. For most of high school, Ellery was riding a wave of frustration and stubbornness and independence.

"We're exactly alike, Ellery Kate," her mother says. The use of both names is like a reminder. "It happens. Don't you think for a second that just because being a teenager is difficult that I ever thought _you_ were difficult. Everything you did, every dumb decision and every emotion you had, baby, that was me. I did it first."

Ellery gives her mother a tight smile. "That was kinda the problem."

Kate laughs, a burst of surprise, and suddenly the way is clear. It's all out there in the open, how it went between them _really_, despite Ellery's self-imposed isolation, and it's her mom. It's her mom and they're going to be best friends, aren't they?

They _are_ alike.

"Well, one thing is different," her mom says suddenly, reaching out with the elephant on her palm. "Here."

"Oh, no. Mom, I don't-"

"I only found it last weekend," she says, pushing the elephant into her fingers. "Your dad said it was a sign. Of course."

Ellery knits her eyebrows but takes the elephant, the cool porcelain against her hand, the designs in navy swirling over the elephant's back like an elaborate tattoo. "You found it?"

"At the back of the cabinet under the sink. In my bathroom. Looks like somebody hid it."

Ella laughs but she plays with the little figurine. "It was my favorite of your collection."

"It's been missing for a long time," her mother says softly.

She swallows. "I should've come for your birthday-"

"No, baby. You came for Christmas. And I knew then."

"Knew what?" she whispers, fingers tight over the elephant.

"You were happy. That's a good birthday present."

Ella closes her eyes, but her mother is already pulling her into a gentle hug, a press of a kiss to her cheek, a little laugh.

"Okay. We're done, _svraka_. No more. Let's have fun until Nick gets here. The two of us. Since Dad is lost to the world."

Ellery nods and finds a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, twisting up. "Yeah. ANd you know what I want to do?"

Her mom leans back a little, shaking her head. "What?"

"Mama, I want to try on all your shoes."

Her mother's answering grin is sly and delighted as she unfolds from the couch. "Yes, perfect. Come on. I bought a new pair of boots last week - your Dad made me - and they would look great on you. And that blue necklace, oh baby, you know it's a pale fire sapphire? You should wear it."

And Ellery doesn't even get the chance to respond because her mom's pulling her off the couch and still talking, talking like her _dad_ usually does, and she's never seen her mother like this - like _Kate_ - and it's breath-taking.

Her mom is happy too.

* * *

Nick texts her and the sound echoes in the bedroom. Her mom gives her a quick look, still some hesitation there, Ellery thinks, or maybe just anticipation? Ella shouldn't be so quick to judge anymore; she's discovered she's had a lot of things wrong.

She pulls out her phone and reads the message, can't help how the corners of her mouth deepen into a smile. He's such a sarcastic punk sometimes. Ella presses her lips together and composes a reply.

_Yes, fine. You were right. When will you be here?_

Her mother is watching her, and Ella can't even feel embarrassed about it - Nick's too much, always has been, but he's just what she's needed. He sets her straight, kinda runs roughshod over her when she's being an ass, and he seems to actually _like_ it. If not love it.

"That him?"

She nods and slips off the kitten heels, hands them back. "He's probably close by-"

She's interrupted by the buzzer, the door man calling up a guest, and her mother grins at her, quirking an eyebrow. "I'd say so."

"Is that the boy?" her father bellows from the study, and she can hear him getting to his feet and coming through, heading towards the living room.

She jumps up to follow him, to beat him to the door like that time in seventh grade when she had her first date and her dad scared the crap out of Marcus. "Dad. No. Come on."

"What?" he says, the picture of innocence even as she tries to rein him in. "I'm just answering the door."

"Mom," she calls back for help. Her mother is already there, reaching out and snagging her father by the ear, making him yelp and stumble back.

Ellery pushes past him and throws open the front door and there he is.

His warm brown eyes slide past her though, focus on the scene behind her. His lips twitch in what goes for a grin on his face, and he nods his head towards her parents. "Mr. Castle, I presume. I'm Nick. Having some trouble?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

"Nick, good to meet you. I hear you're a writer."

"Screenwriter," Nick says quickly, and Ellery cringes as she remembers-

"_Screen_writer," her father says, some old distrust in his voice that her mother rolls her eyes at.

"I take it you've been not so happy with the film adaptations of your novels," Nick says, releasing her father's hand. He's still natural and easy, as he always is, and her father responds to that - one charming man to another.

"Well, let's just say that the books are always better than the movies."

"Of course. Always," he says, and her parents share a little look at that which Ella doesn't understand.

Nick's moving to greet her mother next. He's so comfortable in his own skin; Ella's never met anyone who could pull this off quite like he does. Although she's noticed that she's given everyone else the same impression - a surfeit of confidence. They match that way, but at least Nick's is true. He really doesn't get that worked up about things.

"Mrs. Castle," he says quietly, and even though he's hugging her mother, he does it with _respect_. Ellery hates him a little for how perfect he is.

"Call me Kate." Her mother hugs him back, a little squeeze of his shoulders, and her eyes slide back to Ella before she jerks a thumb towards her father. "And he's Rick."

"All right," Nick grins. "Will do. I've heard a lot about you guys. Feel like I know you."

"Oh?" her father says, a pointed look her direction. She cringes, but her father actually seems to consider his words before he talks, because he doesn't say what she knows he's thinking, _Funny, she's never said anything about you._

Which is technically true, but just how often do they talk? Really talk. Not just her father sending her goofy messages.

"We've already had dinner," her mother is saying. "But we've got leftovers. And ice cream, if you want dessert."

"No, thanks. I'm good."

Ella trails after the three of them and into the living room, sees Nick cast her a quick look over his shoulder. He left their bags on the floor of the entryway, and his hands look strangely over-large and too strong without anything in them. Those long, strong fingers, his narrow palms. Nothing like her father's hands, which always swallowed hers up, but somehow just the same.

"So tell me the story," her dad says, sinking down on the couch and gesturing towards the armchair.

"They story?" Nick says, but Ellery just rolls her eyes.

"Our story. Dad's big on the story."

Her mother sits on the couch as well, her arm coming to rest on Ella's father's shoulder, chin propped up, and strangely, Dad drapes his hand over her stacked knees, possessive in a way Ellery's never exactly noticed before.

Has her mother always let him do that? Claim her like that. It irks Ella when Nick does it, when he takes her hand in front of strangers solely to let them know that she's with him, or when he touches her back when they're on set together and the lead actor comes up flirting. She feels like it's a matter of trust, but Nick doesn't, and maybe that's part of their problem. Why he's never said it and why he wants to move them to New York but won't make plans with her for after.

Ella watches Nick claim the armchair that her father indicated and something perverse and stupid inside her pushes her to sit at his feet.

She's never sat at his feet before. Never. And it feels like the whole room is staring at her in shock but she wanted - she wants - there's something _missing_ in what she gives to Nick and maybe this isn't it, maybe he's not asking for her to sit at his feet, but she can't keep doing it like they have been.

Can't keep wondering if he loves her like she loves him. If he even knows how much she loves him because she's so bad at showing it, saying it, needing it. She's _bad_ at love. Has anyone in the history of the world ever been so terrible at this as Ellery Castle?

Nick's fingers creep to her hair and stroke at her skull and then are gone. Her face burns with it, her mother is watching her, but her father is talking about his own story, and how he met this detective at a rooftop party-

"A rooftop party?" Ella interrupts, drawn out of her own head. She drops her knees and sits cross-legged, leaning forward. "I thought Mom arrested you."

"Yes, but later. First she came to ask me some questions. Interrupted a boring book launch party on a roof. She flashed her badge at me and it was a thousand times more arousing than the usual flashing I got."

"Ew, gross. Girls flashed their boobs at you?"

"Oh, yes. Those were the days." He grunts and Ellery catches her mother's hand retreating, presses her lips together to keep from laughing. Her father goes on with his story, rubbing his ribs. "Anyway. She flashed her badge and it was love at first sight."

"Annoyance at first sight."

"Mild annoyance masking adoration."

"You wish. And that's _not_ the first time we met; you just don't remember me that first time."

"It's _not_ my fault. A long line and - I swear, you must have dressed in a sack or something for me to not have _seen_ you."

Her mother's soft kiss on his cheek brings him to a stumbling halt, the words evaporating, and Ellery swallows hard as she feels Nick's fingers in her hair again, unconscious or not, because maybe it means he sees them when he sees her parents. Maybe it means he sees what she sees and wants it too.

"Our story," Nick starts and she hears him clear his throat but she can't turn her head to look at him.

But her parents do, all soft and distracted attention, sitting close, her father's fingers rubbing her mother's knee.

"Our story is maybe just as dramatic," he says. "Because she saved my life."

Her mother's quick twist of a smile makes Ellery feel stupidly proud, even though she really didn't do anything. "I told him off. That's all."

"She yelled at me," Nick says, and she can hear the smile on his face. "I was that professional driver on a closed course you read about on the disclaimers at the bottom of the screen during commercials. I'd been a stunt driver for years but she said I was taking a turn wrong."

"And I was hanging out the window, so of _course_ I yelled at him to do it right."

"Just for that, I wanted to jerk the wheel and make her fall."

Her father sits up straighter, defensive of her even in a retelling, and her mother's posture is so still, so waiting, wary. Ellery's never really seen them like this before, as an adult witnessing another adult relationship.

Nick shifts forward so he's resting his elbows on his knees. "But as we approached the second turn, I couldn't help remember how the back wheels had skidded just a little on the first turn. And in the back of my mind, I kept replaying how six months before that, I'd been in pretty bad wreck doing a stunt for the Fast and Furious series."

"Oh, yeah?" her father says, carefully neutral.

Even now, hearing Nick's side of things makes her stomach churn. Has she ever heard him tell this story?

"After that accident, I'd wanted to quit but the company asked me to stay on, and I'd figured to just do smaller things, but here I was with this gorgeous, mean-as-a-snake girl hanging out of the window shooting blanks at a semi roaring ahead of us while I took the turns on some of the most dangerous stretches of the Pacific Coast Highway."

Straight drop down to the ocean. At least he doesn't tell her parents that.

Her mother's quick look has Ellery shrugging, because really it's not that big a deal, and that time she had to get out on the hood of the car and jump to the truck ahead of them - that was worse. But by that time, Nick wouldn't let any other driver do her stunts and she was getting the feeling that he liked her, was crazy about her actually, and there'd been a sense of strange and settling confidence in her guts when he was behind the wheel.

If Nick drove the car, she could do it.

"So here was this girl hanging out the window, yelling at me, and the wind was so loud, but I did what she said. And it went off perfectly if a little slow. We came around the turn and drew up alongside the semi; she did her thing and the shoot went great. And later I went back and tested it-"

"You _what_?" Ella jerks to her knees and turns around, staring at him, something sick rolling in her. "Alone? You did that stunt _alone_?"

"Just to see. And you were right. Would've probably killed us both. There was this scree of rocks built up next to the road and my tires would've spun out a little and caught them and we'd have jerked back around-"

"You did that alone," she says, feeling hollow at the thought of him, some moonlit night and the ribbon of road and how dark and grim he was then, how he still wasn't quite over that wreck that nearly ended his life and definitely ended his career.

"Proved you right," he shrugs now, and his hands reach out and grip her by the elbows, drag her up into the chair with him. She sits on the edge, her knee pulled up and over his, and she can't fathom how she didn't know this, know what he did.

"Did you flip the car?" she says quickly, the certainty of it building up in her like dread. "You did. You flipped that gorgeous car. Dad, he had an old Mustang, you'd have loved it, and immediately after the shoot, I never saw that car again. Nick, you big idiot, you flipped your car."

"I did," he admits now, another little shrug. But his eyes go back to her parents. "And it was after that stunt that I decided to pick a different career. I got into technical directing at first, and then switched to screen writing when it turned out I had a knack for putting all the scenes in the right place."

"What he didn't tell you," she adds. "Is that Nick did every stunt with me for the rest of that film. He wouldn't let anyone else near me. It was infuriating because we all knew he was gonna go; he was only supposed to do that one drive as a favor to our boss. And I needed to build up some time with the other guys who _were_ gonna stick around. But he did every stunt of mine."

"I didn't trust those hotshots with her," he says softly, that dangerous steel to his voice that makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck. With dark pleasure. "I knew you had a better handle on it than them, than even me, and at least I'd listen to you."

"Wow," her father says.

Ellery jerks her eyes back to her parents to find them watching her and Nick, studying, like they do in their individual ways. Her mother with that cop look, the detective about to embark on an interrogation. But her father with that _here's the real story_ that always made her and her brother spill the beans about whatever thing they'd done.

"Anyway," she pushes on, skipping ahead. "I could tell he liked me, but he never asked me out. And then he just showed up at my door when the shoot was over and told me we had dinner reservations."

She can feel him grinning beside her, so she elbows him a little for it.

"And," she continues with a smirk of her own. "Nick said, _Are you really wearing that?_"

"Hey now!" he sputters, jerking upright and snagging her around the waist even as her father laughs.

"Not a very smooth opening line," her dad says.

Nick - for the first time - looks a little flustered. "I didn't - come on, Elle, cut me a break. You were in pajamas. Skimpy pajamas. It was a joke. You couldn't have gone out like that-"

Ellery hears his voice cut off and she glances at him, sees the sudden white to his face under the California sun. She looks to her father and then rolls her eyes. "Daddy. It was shorts and a camisole. Get over yourself."

Her mother laughs at that and then gets up off the couch, gathering herself into that long and graceful line. "Anyone want some wine? I have a feeling the night is going to go like this."

"All of us, I think," her father says with a shake of his head. "Well, except Ella. Wait. Nick? Do you drink?"

"Oh, yes. I drink."

Ellery slaps at his chest for that insinuation, and she lifts up from the chair. "I'll help, Mama."


	7. Chapter 7

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

Ella has only managed to pour two glasses of wine when the lock turns and the door pops open.

And it's Dashiell. Of course.

"Ellie!' he grins, coming for her with his arms wide open. Shannon is slipping in behind him, but Ella's got two full glasses in her hands and she accepts the embrace, her brother's wide shoulders dwarfing her.

"Dad. You've already driven her to drink," Dash calls back, half turning with an arm around her shoulders towards their father.

"Not me," he defends, standing up and drawing Shannon into the living room with a hug. "I'm sure it's your mother's fault."

"Ellery and I are cool," her mom says, shaking her head and handing Dash a glass. "Here, serve Shan."

"Shan, you want more wine?"

"No, I'm done. I've got a shift tomorrow," Shannon waves it off and sits down on the couch with their dad, sits close. They must be. . .close, Ella realizes.

"Here, Mom, it's all yours. Another glass will make me crazy," Dash laughs again, handing it back to their mother and tugging Ellery into the living room with him.

Ella hands a glass to Dad and then over to Nick, who lifts it in toast with her father before taking a small sip. Dashiell squeezes her neck and gives Ella a wide grin, the thick dark hair flopping in his eyes, the sharp line of his jaw that makes him look like a model. The lashes, the cheekbones - he got all of her mother's classic looks, while Ellery got her father's rounder face, her father's eyes.

Well, she has her mother's figure, there is that. She works hard to maintain the physicality she needs for the job - the endurance and upper body strength - but the rest of it comes naturally.

For a moment, Ellery and Dashiell stand in the middle of the living room like the hub of a wheel of family and their eyes meet on a smile that is both relieved and right.

Ella's back where she belongs, and he's missed her, and she can read all of that in his look. Her big brother.

She turns to his girlfriend sitting on the couch, that long hair in loose, dark curls, the way she's fit right in to their family and stabilized her brother and somehow called Ella back to it as well. "Shannon," she says with a soft smile, moving to sit down in the tight space of the armchair with Nick. "Thanks for calling and convincing me."

"Shannon called you?" It's both Dashiell and her father who blurt out the question, and she realizes too late that she wasn't supposed to say anything.

"Yeah," she admits, shrugging. "You've got an awesome girlfriend."

Dash is still standing in the middle of the room, like he always is, unable to sit, but he gives Shannon a look that's rather electric, makes Ella shift in her seat because _everyone_ can see it, but they all must be used to it because not even Shannon looks embarrassed - in fact, Shannon is giving him a more tender version of the same adoration.

Jeez, if that's what being in love is supposed to look like, no wonder Nick has no idea how she feels. She _never _looks at him like that. At least. . .not in public. Not where he can see it either. It's mortifying to love someone that much and not have any control over it.

But Nick's fingers are at her waist, a slow stroke across her spine, and she turns and gives him a hesitant glance. He's just smiling at her, a little softer than usual maybe, and it looks like an acceptance of an apology she hasn't given.

"Well, Match Day this weekend," Dash says with a tight sigh, his face tense with it. "And then we'll know."

Nick shifts at her side and his palm broadens at her back, and it's more touching, more possessiveness from him than Ellery has ever seen. "Dash, I'm Nick," he says and leans forward.

They shake and her father sighs. "Sorry. I got caught up. Nick, this is Shannon and Dashiell. Ella's brother tends to make us all screech to a halt."

"Like Dad, I can be demanding. Ask Ellery," he grins. "She never got a word in - I was always talking."

"I can see that," Nick says dryly, and while Dash and her father share looks, her mother actually laughs, moving towards the couch with her own wine and shooing Dashiell ahead of her. Ellery didn't realize until now that her mother wasn't with everyone in the circle.

Does her mom do that often? It feels like something Ellery would do - stand on the edges and observe.

"Sit, wild man," their mom orders, patting his chest as she moves to the other armchair. "You're standing in the middle of the room again."

"Oh, right," Dash grins and sits next to his father, crossing his foot at his knee and his leg already jiggling. Her brother's always been like this, on the go, and she has no _clue_ how he managed to sit still long enough to take the MCATs.

"So, Dashiell, what kind of medicine are you thinking of getting into?" Nick asks, smoothing the way again.

Ella leans against the arm of the chair to prop herself up, watches her brother practically morph right in front of her. Some of Shannon's seriousness must have rubbed off on him, some of her reserve, because he goes still and gives Nick an intense look.

"I'm headed for pediatric surgery. Still trying to decide if I want to specialize in neurology or oncology. It's a toss up right now, God knows, and wherever I'm matched - that's it for me. It'll be a sign."

"Wow," Ella blurts out, whipping her head over to their mom, reading her first before looking at her brother again. "Dash. Pediatric oncology?"

"Yeah," he grins, and the look he shares is with Shannon, and it surprises her. It shouldn't but it does. "Neurology has always been the thing - ever since I can remember - mostly because I'm fascinated with how my weird brain works. But I'm leaning towards oncology even though it's rough. Big turnover. Burnout. And I'm not sure I'm the right. . .temperament for it."

"Dash, with kids," their mom interrupts, "they _need_ that energy. Someone who will invigorate them again. Not a bunch of somber faces who speak quietly and don't even look at them. Inject some joy into their lives. Hope, baby."

Ellery takes a deep breath, adjusting to the thought of her big brother dealing with cancer kids all day, and _wanting_ to do it. Still it's much more noble a career than a stunt woman, so who is she to judge?

"You should do it," she says quietly. "You could make it work for you. Being wild."

"Being wild," he gives a little sarcastic tilt to his mouth as he says it, "has never hurt me. You guys made it seem like a good thing."

"It _is_ a good thing," Ellery says heatedly, sitting up straighter as she glares at her brother. "Stop acting like it's something you don't want. You're a thousand times better than anyone else could even hope to be-"

"Ellery, sweetheart," her father says quietly.

She stops, realizes her hands are in fists, that Nick has leaned forward and his palm is at her back, _soothing_, but this is it. This is _all_ of it, and if she doesn't say it now, it won't get said. She's tired of not saying things.

"Dash," she starts, hating herself for the way her voice cracks. "Dash, you've always been everything I wanted to be. Everyone loves you and you love everyone back, and we all can _see_ it. We all know. And I don't know how to do that or be as - as - as awesome as you are at _loving_ things and enjoying it and. . ."

Her mother has half-risen from the other armchair, that anxious look on her face that she always had whenever Ellery threw a fit as a teenager, but this time she doesn't want her mom stepping in between her and life, shielding her, dragging her to a quiet corner to let her fall apart or help her put herself back together. She just wants to say it.

"I wished a thousand times I could more like you," she gets out finally. "But I'm not."

"No, Cricket," her father says into the silence. "You're like your mom. Extraordinary."

She breathes hard, staring at her dad, and then her mother is there, brushing her fingers through Ellery's hair, ruffling it, and bending down to kiss her forehead.

"That was beautiful, Ella. All the right words."

She lifts her face, feels her heart twist at the look in her mom's eyes. "I didn't mean I don't-"

But her mom laughs and taps two fingers against her cheek. "Oh, baby girl. How many times did I wish I was more like your dad? How many times have I thought it's my fault that you struggle so much with life? But Dad is right. That's what makes you amazing."

And then her mother moves past her and into the kitchen, taking her almost-full glass of wine with her, calling back over her shoulder.

"Who wants ice cream? Dashiell, I know you do. And Rick - no more for you."

* * *

"What are you doing, hon?" Nick says quietly to her, taking the bowl of ice cream. They're alone in the kitchen; her mother must have sneaked out while Ellery wasn't looking just so that Nick could corner her.

"What do you mean?"

"What's all this with your family?"

"Nothing," she mutters, shrugging her shoulders. She can't right now. She just can't.

He's never pushed, and he doesn't now. His mouth comes to hers briefly, his taste like wine and sugar, and she's both grateful and not.

She's always liked that they're practically the same height, that she's been able to hold her own with him, but sometimes she needs someone to _make_ her. That's never been Nick.

Maybe they aren't-

"Later," he says suddenly, nodding to her and lifting an eyebrow as he walks back to the living room.

Later.

He's never done that before.

Ella stares after Nick as he takes his place in the armchair once more, giving her brother one of his usual crooked smiles and then softening a little under her mother's hand on his arm as she passes.

Ellery takes a deeper breath and returns to serving ice cream, scooping mocha and mint and blueberry - gross, Dad - into her father's bowl and sticking a spoon in it. She convinced her mom to let him have another bowl since he ate the sugar-free stuff earlier. Her mother - someone Ellery never expected to relent - actually went all mushy and hugged her and said she was a good girl.

And then told her to go ahead and dish up some for her father.

She carries the last bowl over to the living room, her own in Nick's other hand as he waits for her, and Ellery presents the ice cream to her dad, watches him grin.

"Thank you, Cricket. Going to bat for me. Come sit. Leave the boy."

She rolls her eyes, but Dashiell and Shannon are already hopping up and moving around, everyone shuffling places, and Ella can't help the thrill that zips through her at sitting close to him.

So she does, her dad nestling her beside him, his kiss against her forehead, his fingers cold on her arm. Nick gets up and hands over her ice cream.

"There. Much better," her father murmurs. Mom has come to sit on the other side of her, so she's sandwiched between them, and Nick is giving her this look like she's right where he wants her to be, like he _approves_, whatever that means.

"Hey, did anyone message Rafe or Allie?" Dash says from the coffee table where he's perched. He twists back to their parents, grabs their mother's knee. "Hey. Did you talk to Rafe?"

"No, why?"

"Well, it's a family reunion, of course. I'm calling him."

"Call Sophie too," Ellery adds in a burst of feeling. "Oh, wait, never mind. She's in college. She probably won't come."

"What do you mean, _oh wait_," Dash snorts. "I tell her you're here and she'll drop everything."

"For me?"

"Her Hollywood star aunt?"

"Aunt?" Nick says, raising an eyebrow to her.

Ellery winces. There is just. . .oh, so very much she hasn't managed to explain. "Oh, yeah, sorry. I guess I never explained?"

"Uh, not exactly. I've heard about Sophie but. . .Allie is your older sister? I thought she was a cousin or something."

"She's our sister. Daddy's first."

"Speaking of," her mother interrupts. "How's Meredith?"

Ella groans and shakes her head, cradling her ice cream against her chest. "She is not happy with me. Since I moved in with Nick, all I hear about is how I should be taking the work more seriously, how I've been using her this whole time and - it's impossible. Tell them Nick. She calls like every day."

"Wait. Wait." Nick is holding up both hands and his gaze is like an arrow on her. "Are you - you mean Meredith is. . ." He trails off and his eyes shift to her father.

"Dad's first wife," Ellery says.

Nick's mouth actually drops open and he shoots a quick look to Kate which Ellery finds herself _in love _with him for, that check to make sure her mother is okay with this conversation. Why does that make her heart pound so hard for him?

"I'm his third, Nick," her mother laughs.

"And _last_. That should count for something." Dad grumbles something about his past sins being held against him and tries to poke Mom over Ellery's shoulder, but Dash is suddenly laughing over his phone.

"Allie and Rafe and the girls are all coming," he shouts, jumping up. "Sophie actually squealed; I swear. Family reunion in progress." He turns to Nick then and flashes that charming smile that Ellery used to hate him for, and adore him as well. "Mom's been - well - Mom to everyone. Meredith is Allie's mother but, jeez Ellie, I don't know how you did it for as long as you did. Living with her."

"Me either," her father shivers. "Or _why_ you would do it."

"Free room and board in LA. And she's mellowed."

Her mother turns and gives her a raised eyebrow which cracks Ellery open with a laugh, shaking her head.

"Okay, maybe mellow isn't the word. But. . .you know exactly what you're getting with Aunt Mere. And I needed that for a while."

"Oh, see, _that's_ why I can't keep your family straight," Nick says, pointing his spoon at her. "You call her Aunt Meredith and so I thought Allie was a cousin. You're confusing me on purpose."

"Not on purpose," she laughs back. "And that was Meredith's idea. She said we were family-"

"She did _not_," her father gapes.

"-and that I should call her Aunt, and she took me shopping _every_ weekend-"

"All right, _now_ I see why you moved in with me. You hate to shop. Unless it's shoes." Nick is giving her that slow smile of his, the one that says he knows her _oh so very well, _and he flicks a finger in her direction that says everything else.

She presses her lips together to keep from smiling back, but she knows it's twisting her mouth anyway.

"Ew," her brother complains. "Stop making eyes at each other. Come on."

"Whatever," Ellery leans forward, kicking at him with her bare foot. "You and Shan were _just_ doing it."

"Ellery!" he gasps, eyes widening so round and dramatic. "Even if we were, that's not something you just blurt out in front of our _parents_."

Ella groans and flops back into the couch even as her father bursts with laughter, leaning forward to high-five Dash for that one.


	8. Chapter 8

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

Ellery is just stepping out of the laundry room with a stack of clean sheets when she hears Shannon and her father in the kitchen, the low tones of secrets being kept.

Ella can't help pausing and going quiet, her curiosity flickering to life, the smell of her mother's laundry still buffeting her as she listens to them talk.

"So you did this, huh?" her father murmurs. "Good job, little bear."

_Little bear?_

"Thanks," Shannon says. Ellery can hear the pride in her voice and she knows that feeling, how it is being the center of her father's attention. "But it wasn't really me. I think Ella wanted a reason to come back."

"Yeah?" her father says, and there's such hope in his voice that it kind of breaks Ellery's heart. She never meant to make them doubt. "What about the tickets though, Shannon. Because we've just got the six season passes."

"Don't worry, I already called Rafe and he talked to Aunt Maddie. She had Jay pull some strings and the family that has the box right below yours - they've given them up for the game. Its enough for everyone to be there."

Game? But it's March. Are there baseball games in March?

"Russell Martin comes through," her father laughs. "Awesome. This is gonna be. . .epic. Seriously epic. I can't believe it. Dash is gonna flip."

Ellery hears their voices growing louder and she scoots back into the laundry room, her heart pounding with that new information. She presses the bedsheets against her chest and inhales their familiar, comforting scent even as she hears her father grabbing something from the pantry.

Just what is going on here?

* * *

"Help me, Ella." Her mother snags her by the elbow and drags her towards the stairs. "Clean sheets on all the beds."

When they get to Ellery's old room, she slips inside after her mother and laughs at the changes.

The shrine to her long-lost lizard is gone: Abe Lincoln lived to be ten years old and died quietly in his tank when Ellery was fifteen, but she never could dismantle his terrarium. Looks like somone did though, one of the girls maybe. The bookshelf against one wall is still there even though it's filled with a hodge-podge of genres and age-ranges. Most of those aren't Ellery's.

The walls shimmer in that pearl gray that Ella insisted on when she was eight or nine, but the posters of carnival acts are gone. Lion tamers, stunt performers riding bareback, elephants. . .she was once in love with the circus and that element of the room has been remade into a more grown-up taste.

It still has all those touches of black and red that Ellery was obsessed with in high school. The red lamp with its black fringe, the red velvet chair in one corner, the black birds lined up across the desk. Those are all hers.

"Black and red still your favorite colors?" her mother asks. "Oh, I'm sorry. Blood crimson. You insisted we call it blood crimson."

"You were laughing at me."

"We were. Yes. Even though Dad encouraged it. But you can't take yourself so seriously."

"Do you think I did?"

Her mother's lips twitch. "I don't think that's possible in this house."

Ellery gives an easier smile back, running her fingers over the black metal birds. "I don't think so either. But I guess sometimes it all seemed so very _necessary_. Vital. And I took that too seriously. Dash was always able to just let it roll right off his back - maybe because he had to? Because he was always running up against how differently the world worked for him. But not me."

"Does you no good comparing yourself to him. You know that, right?"

She lifts her eyes to her mother. "I know." Now. She knows that _now._ Why did it take so long?

"You okay sleeping in here? It's changed, I know, because the girls have kinda overtaken it. They love it - they feel very adult in this room, I think, even though they've left their stuff."

"Sophie or the other two?"

"Hm, all three," her mother says with a slow smile. "But still your room. New mattress, though, I swear. Dad and I just got it."

Ellery laughs. "So long as Nick will fit."

"Oh, Nick's tall all right. But your dad - you know how he shops for things. He tested out every single mattress, bounced around."

Ella giggles and claps a hand over her mouth, but just that mental picture - her dad digging into the mattress at some store, dismissing it and going on to the next one - it is just _so_ Rick Castle.

"So I'm sure Nick will fit," her mom finishes. "About the same size."

And then her mother's eyes slide to hers, a devious look on her face, and Ellery gasps. "Oh, gross. Mother!"

"Sorry, sorry," she laughs out, shaking her head. "Dad's a terrible influence."

"Jeez. I do not want that mental image when Nick and I are-"

"Ew, Ella! I don't want that mental image either," she grumbles.

Ellery giggles again and their eyes meet once more. She's got this breathless feeling in her chest because this is new, but this is also old. She remembers giggling with her mama, the two of them alone in this very room, involved in some bedtime story or playing with barbies or watching Abe Lincoln, heads together, side by side.

She doesn't know if it stopped or if maybe Ella herself stopped showing up for these moments. Maybe it's just that now Ellery is getting out of her own way.

So she steps up to the bed - new mattress, but the same bedframe and headboard, same black and red comforter - and she helps her mother strip the sheets off the bed, replace them with new ones.

* * *

"Hurry, Ella. We won't get a thing done when the grandkids get here," her mother says, pulling her out of Dashiell's room - bed now made - and back down the hall.

Ellery follows her mother, still a little caught up by how much everything is the _same_ even as it's also so very different. "Grandkids. That is so weird. You've had grandkids since I was like five."

"Six."

"Six," she says, rolling her eyes. "Isn't that weird?"

"We've got a strange mix of a family, baby girl. You should know that by now. Come on, you were living with Meredith. Why's it only striking you now?" her mother laughs.

Ellery watches her mother enter what was always the guest room even when she was little. Mostly for Gram, but Papa and Grammy Kelly slept over sometimes too. "I guess - I don't know. As a kid, it's normal because that's just how it is. But seeing us through Nick's eyes. Or Shannon's."

"Oh, Cricket, about Shannon," her mother says, turning a hesitant look towards her as she flips on the light. "Be careful with her. She's got a tender heart."

Ellery swallows hard and finds herself backing up a step. "What do you mean?"

"Her family's never been. . .all that supportive. I don't know really. She doesn't talk about it, but you know Dash tells me things and it just - she's got this crazy amount of self-confidence but underneath it, I think she needs us a lot more than we know. Sometimes she reminds me of Rafe."

Rafe?

"Why are you warning _me?_" she gets out. Like they're protecting Shannon. Like her mom is closing ranks against Ellery. And what is this about Allie's husband? Rafe is _awesome._

"Because you mean so much to Dash. So your opinion means a lot to Shannon too, of course. She's so nervous around you. You didn't notice?"

Ella watches as her mother yanks the comforter off the bed, moves dumbly to follow, the last set of clean sheets in her arms. "Me? Nervous around me?"

Her mother lifts an eyebrow and chuckles. "Okay, wow. You're the one who usually picks up on these things. Shannon is trying so hard to be friends with you - has been - and Dash keeps telling her that it's okay, you don't hate her-"

"I don't hate her!" she bursts out. "Why would I hate her?"

"I know. We all know that when you're quiet, you're feeling the most comfortable, the most natural - just you being you. But Shannon's got some vulnerable places. Okay? If you're quiet, then it means you don't like her. So just try a little harder with her, Cricket."

"I guess that's why she's attracted to Dash," Ellery laughs a little, strangely comforted by the fact that her mother knows. If she's quiet, she feels relaxed. If she's having to put a lot of words out there, push into the silence, then something is wrong. "If Dash doesn't shut up around her, then she probably feels pretty validated. Having his attention. His focus."

She knows that feeling too, being able to channel a guy like her brother and make him _do _things, make him come to her, having that power. She ordered him around when they were all growing up; it was only in high school that things changed so much.

Huh. Maybe she and Shannon are more alike than she thought.

Her mother skims a hand over the fitted sheet, tucks it in. "Dash is really good for her, pushes her to stretch out and be a little crazy and we've seen her really assert herself ever since they got together. He brings it out in her. And she focuses him."

"It's been four years though, hasn't it?"

"You say that like there's a timetable. . ." Her mother turns around and takes a bed sheet from her. "Ella?"

"No. Just. Nick and I have been together almost four."

"Yeah?" her mom says softly. "You've been thinking about that."

She nods, realizes what she's unintentionally spilled to her mother - doesn't she always spill? - and she takes one side of the sheet so she can help her mom make the bed. "Nick wants to move back. I told you that. But he talks like - I don't know. Sometimes he's talking about the stuff we'll do together and sometimes it's just him. Like he doesn't know."

"Maybe he doesn't know."

Ella frowns. "But I know."

"Oh?"

She lifts her head and feels the burn of _knowledge_ in her. Like a blush. But so much more. "Yes."

"Dad's favorite thing to say is that you have to take a risk for love," her mother says suddenly, straightening up, the sheets neglected. "You have to do the crazy thing. The thing that makes you panic. I've never been good at that - not even with your dad at first. He had to teach me."

"It all makes me panic," Ella admits, giving her mom a slow smile. "But I like it. The panic feels good too."

Her mother lifts a wondering smile to Ellery, reaching out and tucking her hair back. "Well, look at that. You've got some of your father in you. Maybe Dash isn't the wild man - maybe it's you."

Ella laughs, her grin cracking wide over her face. "Maybe."

"So then, sweetheart. What are you going to do about it?"


	9. Chapter 9

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

When they come downstairs, all the beds with clean sheets, Nick, Dash, and her father are standing at the bar pouring another round of drinks and Ellery catches the tail end of their conversation.

"Wakesurfing? They let you do that in the Hudson?"

"No," Ellery shouts, darting towards them. "Nick James, I _told_ you. No, Daddy. No wakesurfing. You're not allowed. And neither are you, Dash. Mama, tell them no."

She turns back to her mother, but her mom only smiles and lifts an eyebrow. "It does absolutely no good telling him no."

"Daddy, you can't. It's dangerous. Nick, jeez, I told you not to bring it up."

"Wait, someone tell me what wakesurfing even is," Shannon interrupts, coming up on their little group from the living room.

"It's just being on a board and getting towed behind a boat," her father says.

"No, it's not," Nick answers. "It's actually surfing the waves left behind by boats or ships - the wake. You're not attached and they don't know you're there."

"Oh." Her father's eyes get big, all kinds of ideas in his head, and _no_. She is cutting this off.

"Daddy. I swear. Tanker surfing is dangerous and-"

"Wait, wait," her mother interrupts. "Nick said wakesurfing. Not _tanker_ surfing."

Ellery shuts her mouth. Oops. She was - okay, so wakesurfing isn't exactly. . .

Dashiell grins wide and eyes Nick. "So. Nick. My man. You took Ellery tanker surfing, didn't you?"

Shit.

Nick slides a look at her and she knows it's her panic face - the quiet and calm and deadly-still face she has when the trick or stunt is about to go sour on them - but she can't help it.

"Ellery Kate," her mother says quietly.

"Um." She curls her hands into fists. Her own fault. She let it slip. Nick actually was probably talking about the mundane wakesurfing, the kind behind sedate pleasure boats and not the kind they do in the Gulf of Mexico every summer.

"Someone better tell me what that means. Tanker surfing," her father says.

"Ella and I go surfing every year in a new place. A couple years ago it was in the Gulf of Mexico - actually, really close to where she said you guys went on a bunch of family trips?"

"South Padre?"

"Yeah, that's it. We were near there. We caught up with some friends and went tanker surfing. Ellery and I good surfers - we go in a group - and it was a lot of fun. So we've tried to go back every year. I was just wondering if the wakesurfing could be done here in New York - if a group got together. Figured you'd know about that kind of thing."

"He would," her mother says dryly, but she turns her eyes to Ellery. "And as charming and diplomatic as Nick is - he still didn't explain what tanker surfing means."

"We catch the wake left by tankers," she says quietly. No point in not telling her mother everything and immediately. The interrogation can be brutal, so she won't prolong the agony.

"Sometimes it's a mile long wave," Nick boasts. "We can ride it to the end, way out, and the guys in the boat come pick us up."

"That's - um - that's how the shark ate my board," she admits, wincing.

"Whoa, what?" her father yelps, but he's grinning. "A shark?"

Dash is grinning - he's already heard this story and Ellery assumed her brother had told on her. Guess not.

She sighs. "He just nudged it. Took a little taste."

"Oh. My. God." Her father scrapes a hand down his face and shakes his head. "Wow. Okay. Well, my daredevil surfs the wake created by oil tankers and went up against a shark. Why am I surprised?"

Ellery bites her lip and glances around at her family. Dashiell looks pleased that she's the one in the hot seat and not him for once, while her mother and father look like they've always looked - a little proud but not sure they should be.

Of course, when she was fifteen, that was mostly an agonized kind of pride on her mother's part. Or so Ella's always thought.

Maybe it's always been that fierce sense of _sameness_ instead. Her mother looking at Ellery and seeing herself, and maybe seeing history repeat itself and being glad for it but also knowing where that ends.

Only, look at her mother's life. It's. . .awesome. If Ellery ends up like her mother, she'll be grateful for it.

"No wakesurfing, Dad. Dash. _Nick_."

"Hey, wait a minute. You and I can go wakesurfing, right? Just not these two," Nick protests.

Ellery frowns. True. But if she's going, and if she's going wakesurfing _here_, then her Dad and Dash will want to go as well.

"What if Nick teaches me?" her dad says then. "What if I get really good-"

"No," her mother says with a quick shake of her head. She slides a glance to Dash that Ellery realizes encompasses some anxiety there too. "Let's keep just one daredevil in the family. Ella at least knows what she's doing."

"But if I practice-" her father starts.

"Castle," her mother says, soothingly, seriously, her fingers skimming the back of his arm. "Promise me."

And Ellery sees, for the first time, that her father's not young anymore. It's not just that she thinks her dad and Dash are too clumsy and ungraceful for the kind of focus and agility it takes to ride the wake of a tanker, but also that her father isn't her mother's partner any longer.

He's not chasing after suspects and dodging right hooks and defusing bombs and shooting at the bad guys because he's her mom's only back-up. They don't do that anymore - neither of them - and they've earned a peaceful, less stressful retirement. They've earned the chance not to court danger and walk on the edge.

"But regular surfing," Nick says then, easily, smoothly. "Next time we go, you guys should come with us. Whole family. We'll teach you guys some tricks."

Her father's eyes light up. "Yeah. That would be cool. Dash, my man, want to go surfing this summer?"

He makes a face. "I'll be a resident," he sighs out longingly - and Ella's not sure if he's yearning for the surfing trip or the residency.

"We'll find time," Shannon say quietly into the conversation. "Wherever you end up, Dash. We'll make time for family."

He flashes her a relieved smile and Ellery gets it now. How could she not have seen this before? They're not married and there's no guarantee that Shannon could or should follow Dashiell to whatever resident program gives him a spot in whatever part of the country. She's already got a job as a pharmacist and she's working on her own internship; maybe she _can't_ move wherever he goes.

By this summer, they might not even live in the same state, let alone the same city, and when Shannon keeps saying _we_ Ellery realizes that she's telling Dashiell over and over again that they'll make it. That she's commited.

It makes Ellery reach out blindly to Nick and take his hand, squeezing, her throat closing up a little for the intensity on her brother's face.

He has no idea what comes next, and Dash - of all people - absolutely hates that.

* * *

"Ooh, let me, let me," Ellery says, pushing past her brother to get to the door.

He laughs at her but lets her go; she throws open the front door to Sophie.

Little Sophie's glaring orange hair has grown into this ginger-tinged warm brown - the very definition of titian - but the adorable face is the same: bright blue eyes, freckles in an explosion across her cheeks and nose. Even at eighteen she's still impish and adorable.

"Sophie," Ella grins.

Sophie flies to Ellery, wrapping her up in a huge embrace, the top of her head coming to Ella's chin.

"Ellie, Ellie, Ellie," she squeals. "You're really here."

"Hey there, little sister," she murmurs. They aren't really. But Ellery was only five when her parents took her and Dash to the hospital to meet the new baby girl in the family. It was Rafe who sat her down in the chair and then put tiny Sophie into her arms, helped her hold her niece.

Niece. Cousin. Sister. All of those.

"I _hate_ you living in California," Sophie pouts. "Hate it. I hate it. You can't go back."

"I agree," Ella hears her father call out. "Sophie's exactly right. You can't go back. Sorry, Nick. We're gonna kidnap her."

"Well," Nick starts. That whole thing about wakesurfing was his way of breaking ground about moving back here, wasn't it?

"Nick," Ellery says, half-turning with Sophie still in a tight embrace. But she shoots Nick a look to silence him. "Here's Sophie. Sophie, this is my boyfriend, Nick."

Nick gives Ella a long look, but he keeps his mouth shut about all his plans and comes forward, a hand lifted to shake. Sophie is a hugger though, and she wraps her arms around Nick and squeals again.

"You're super cute." Sophie turns back to Ellery and wriggles her eyebrows. "Isn't he cute? Whew. Good job."

"None of that," her father is saying, sighing at her. "You make me feel old, Sophie."

"Too late, Dad; if I'm eighteen then you're already old," she grins, but she releases Nick and wraps her arms around her grandfather's neck, hugging tightly, kissing both cheeks.

Ellery can't believe that Sophie still calls him Dad; it must be a joke now because her father is groaning and squeezing Sophie's arm. She used to do that when she was really little, confusing who was called what because Ellery and Dash called Rick Castle 'dad' and she spent all her time with them. And then Rafe sat her down and tried to talk her out of it, explain things, but it seemed to make it worse.

"Soph, you still call him that?" Ellery grins, shutting the door now after her niece. Cousin. Sister. She can't keep it straight in her head either. Dash is wrapping his arms around Sophie now, squeezing hard and lifting her off her feet.

"Only to make fun. At least I haven't corrupted the little girls," Sophie says with a shrug, grinning now at them all. She oofs when Dash sets her down and turns to Ella's mother. "Mama, did you make the spaghetti? Because yours is my favorite and I'm starving."

Kate laughs and threads an arm through Sophie's to tug her towards the kitchen. "Dad and I made it together. You'll like it though. Come on. Family behind you?"

"I think so. I called Mom and she said she'd crammed the littles into the subway seats despite the crush."

"Oh yeah," Dash says. "I forgot about that thing downtown. Is your dad cheffing tonight?"

"Nope, he was at home." Sophie has taken over the center of attention, but she and Dash seem to do well switching it off, calling to each other as Sophie gets dragged into the kitchen for food.

Of course, Ellery and Nick and Shannon all follow, the conversation orienting towards the brightest in the room, as always.

Their father and mother get dinner and other leftovers back out of the fridge and set about heating things up, and then of course, since it's out, Nick asks for a plate too. Ellery figured he'd get hungry and they'd come downstairs around midnight for a snack, but she's not surprised.

Now that Sophie is making Kate and Rick work, everybody else gives in and groups around the table, passing the reheated food down the line, snatching bread or meatballs, pouring more wine or water, settling in.

Ellery lets out a little breath - something like relief - and finds herself leaning against Nick's shoulder, her cheek against the warm cotton of his shirt, worn out by all the family. The conversations and her childish tantrum and healing things and getting her whole perspective shifted - it's exhausting work.

She feels Nick's muscle ripple and then his hand is raised and stroking the side of her cheek, a quick touch but it makes her feel light. Good.

"Hey," Nick says quietly. "How little are the little girls?"

Ellery laughs, lifting her head to grin at him. "It's just the age gap between them. Twelve and three. I'm not sure, but I think Mia was totally a surprise - she's the three year old. Hey. You still good with all this?"

Nick grins back then, more animated than she's seen in ages. "Yeah. Yeah, actually, your family is awesome. Don't know why you ever ran away."

"Shut up," she groans, knocking her forehead into his shoulder. "I don't either. I'm such an idiot. It's really hitting home how stupid I've been."

"Don't say that," he murmurs then, the humor dropping out of his voice. "You needed to figure some things out. So did I. We did our wilderness wandering and now, Elle, honey, it's time to come home. Don't you think?"

She raises her eyes to him, their conversation lost amid the babble of voices from her family, but this is it.

This is the moment.

"Time for both of us to go home," she whispers back. She hates that it's a question, but it is. It is.

He reaches out and brushes his fingers at her temple; he's pushing her hair back behind her ear in a caress that makes her heart pound.

"Yeah, Elle. Both of us. Together. I don't want to do it without you."

She feels her mouth widening, stretching into a smile she can't control, and the force of his statement breaks her open inside. She presses her lips together, but it's still there, still growing. They don't talk about this stuff really and it feels so good to get it out in the open.

"That your way of saying we're meeting your dad next?" she gets out.

"Nope. I'd never be that cruel to you. Or me. Mostly me. I think you could totally take my father."

She laughs and lifts her eyes to his, finds he's smiling back just as crookedly, just as helplessly. She pushes in and kisses him, a wrangle of lips, and then she just - she just goes for it.

Mom said take a risk. She's the daredevil, right? That's what she's good at.

"Hey. Nick. You should know - I'm in love with you."

His hand around hers grips too tightly, squeezing so hard her fingers blanch, and his face has gone nearly rigid with - what? He stares at her, mouth dropping open, and then a flush of color suffuses his face, climbs his cheeks, makes his eyes. . .wow.

Wow.

Suddenly he's wrapping both arms around her and practically yanking her from her seat, crushing her against him, and she hears it at her ear, over and over.

"You do. You are. You really do."

She doesn't even need him to say it back. It's in the tone of his voice and the grip of his arms and the relief pouring out of him. She knows.

But when his words do come, they have a husky tone she's never heard before.

"Ellery, hon, I gotta ask your dad something."

She freezes and lifts her head, stares at him. "_Now?"_

"Now."


	10. Chapter 10

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

Nick's already standing to get her father's attention when the front door flies open again and the rest of the family comes crowding inside: Allie, Dani, Rafe, Mia. The three year old is sleepy on her father's shoulder, but Mia perks up when she sees everyone and holds out her arms.

"Mama," she calls, and of course Kate comes, taking the girl with a hum and whispering to her, making her giggle.

Twelve year old Dani stands behind her own mother, shrugging off her jacket, and Allie pushes her forward. "Go say hi."

Ellery stands and gives Nick a warning look. "Wait. Just wait."

"I don't think I can," he says.

"Nick."

"Ella-bean," Allie calls out, coming for her. And then she's wrapped up in her older sister's arms, the smell of citrus and something sweet, like they've been cooking again. "I'm so glad you're home. How was the flight? How's Meredith? You guys okay? And Nick-"

Allie is already wrapping an arm around Nick and drawing him into the hug.

"I've heard so much about you," she's saying to Nick. Ellery's dragged into a massive embrace by Rafe, tight and hard, a kiss on her cheek just like her dad does.

"Rafa," she murmurs, hugging him back.

"Ellery Kate, look at you. Perfect ten."

She laughs and shakes her head at him; he lets her go and she sees Dani behind him, waiting on her turn. "Danielle, wow. Last time I saw you. . ."

Dani's the only kid to get her father's looks so completely - the dark hair, olive skin, the eyes that seem so old. She's got a book in her hand, like it's always something she carries around with her, and it makes Ellery suddenly so very sad to realize she's missed this - the change from being a dorky, too-skinny seven year old annoyance into this mature, book-loving twelve year old.

"I was seven," Dani says with a shrug. "Ellie, have you read this book? Dad says you read as much as Dash but more fun things."

Ellery smothers a grin and takes the book that Dani holds up to her. "Yeah, actually, I read this series when it came out. Book three is supposed to come out-"

"In May," she sighs happily. "I'm rereading it. It's so good. Mom says she doesn't have time to read so much, but when she does, she reads biographies."

"Yeah, your mom likes biographies. I remember that. But you know what? Later I can show you a couple of other really good series you'll probably like."

"The Knife books? Cause I already read those. Pops gave them to me."

"Dani-girl," Rafe says with a grin. "Let's share Ellery with the whole family, okay?"

Dani sighs but she takes her book back and bellies up the dining room table, wriggling in between Shannon and Dashiell and getting a kiss on both cheeks from Dash's girlfriend. Dani's awkwardness evaporates around Shannon, and Ellery sees how much Dani needs that. Someone not as perfectly gorgeous as her sister and mother, as her grandmother Mama as well.

Ella should be here. She should-

Oh no.

No.

Nick's cornered her dad.

* * *

It takes her too long to get across the room.

First there's Rafe and Allie still worming into the chaos around the table, and then Dashiell calls out to her, tossing a roll her direction to hand to Mama, and then she's trapped by the darling little Mia who wants to be held by her aunt even though she barely knows her.

Ellery isn't good with babies or toddlers or whatever a three year old is called at this age, but she dutifully takes Mia from Mom and gets a kind of sticky kiss on the neck for it.

"My Ellie," Mia hums happily, then leans back for her grandmother. Jeez, still doesn't seem right to Ella - thinking of her mother as a grandmother. But she has been, this whole time her mother's been a grandmother to Sophie first, and then Dani and Mia.

Ella's just handing Mia back when her father's voice booms out over the crowd. Ellery freezes.

"Hey, everybody. Listen up. Nick wants to ask us something."

Oh no. No.

Ella lifts her gaze to Nick and he's got that panic look on his face - completely blank, no emotion, his gaze so dark and so closed off that he looks hundreds of miles away. He had that same look when he was coming out of that first turn on their stunt together, when she felt the back wheels skid and him losing control of the car for just a fraction of a second. It was the reason she yelled at him in the first place.

Seeing that face now makes her want to run and yet it also makes her want to create a diversion so _he_ can run.

But the room is quiet. And it's too late for running.

Nick straightens his shoulders and faces them all - her whole family. "I want to move back to New York - always have wanted to do that, actually - but I don't have a job here, I don't have any contacts, nothing. I figured it wasn't fair to Ellery to drag her back with me when I didn't have anything to offer her."

What? Nothing to _offer_ her?

"And she'd have to quit and I don't know what her work looks like out here in New York, and so I didn't want to bring her back to nothing. But-"

Her whole body is shaking and she feels her mother's fingers wrap around her elbow, holding her up.

"But I think, actually, Ella, honey, you've got a lot waiting for you in New York. And so I'd like permission - or a blessing really - from everyone in your family to totally uproot your life in LA, our lives, and drag you back here. As - as my wife."

Oh my God, he just proposed to her.

He hasn't even said he _loves_ her, and he proposed to her in front of her whole family.

She stares back at Nick from across the table, across the whole kitchen, across the gulf between them and she realizes it's just made up of faces, her family's faces, everyone looking at her and waiting and grinning and holding their breath.

And then Nick blushes. To the roots of his hair and the color makes his eyes deep and alive and he opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again.

"Oh, and. . .I love you too, Elle. If - maybe that wasn't obvious." He flushes even deeper and winces at her. "I think I got this backwards."

"Oh, shut up," she groans, closing her eyes on a laugh. "Yes. Of course. Yes, I'll marry you."

* * *

She realizes something's up when Allie and Rafe's intimate conversation moves to include Kate in it as well. Ellery's had Nick at her side for the last thirty minutes while they suffer through her family's crazy celebration - a combination of champagne and ice cream and spaghetti and lots of talking - but suddenly she finds herself by her father at the foot of the table and Nick drawn off by her mother.

That was quite clever, the way they did that.

She lets her family have their secrets and she leans into her dad's shoulder. He lifts his arm and wraps it around her, kising her temple.

"Can't believe you did that to Nick, Daddy," she says, frowning up at him a little, making her face fierce to scare him.

"I say if he wants you - he should take a risk for love," her fathers says back promptly. "Plus, he was stammering and making a wreck out of asking me, so I figured I'd shove him on stage and he'd sink or swim."

"You're so mean," she mutters, but she's trying to keep from laughing.

"But it forced him to find some courage and say what he's wanted to say to you for years now," her father goes on, rubbing his thumb over her arm and then letting her go.

"For years? No, Daddy, we've only been living together for a year."

"For years, baby girl. Look at him."

She has been. She can't _stop_ looking at him. He's in deep conversation with Allie and her mother and she has no idea why.

"I might be a little blinded by - uh - being in love with him," she admits, turning her eyes back to her father with a wince. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," he laughs. "That's a good thing. I'm saying I've been there - I know what it looks like. We saw it in Rafe when he was crazy about Allie, and we saw it when we opened the door to Nick tonight. He's crazy about you."

"Being insane doesn't exactly recommend love-"

"Cricket, let it go. It's _fun_ to be in love. I'm proud of you for having the guts to say yes to him."

She stares at her father for a second and then shakes her head. "You're crazy too."

"Probably. Your mom does have a tendency to make me crazy," he intones, raising an eyebrow. "And since we're speaking of your mother."

She darts her eyes back to him, hearing the change in his voice. Seriousness has etched across his face, his blue eyes are so grey as he watches her.

"You and Mom get a chance to talk tonight? Clear things up?"

Ellery lets out a startled breath, staring at him.

"Because it kills her, you know. It really does. And if you're still - I don't know what you fought about, or if it was any one thing - but Ella, I'm asking you - as a favor to me - to make an effort here. When you and Nick move back, you can take some time and try to make it work. Because your mom has walls, I know that better than anyone, but not against you. She's never had walls against you, no matter what it might have felt like-"

"No," she gets out finally, shaking her head at her father. "No, Daddy, no. We're not - we're good. Mom and I - we're not fighting. We weren't fighting. I just didn't know how to - how to say anything. But what do you mean, it kills her?"

Her father leans in and kisses her cheek, his hand at her hair and petting. "Okay, okay, never mind. You guys are good - that's all I want."

"No, stop." She grabs him before he can get up from the table. "What do you mean it kills her?"

"Shoot, Mom's gonna kill _me_," he mutters. "Pretend I didn't say that. You guys have it covered. I always meddle and Kate's always a step ahead of things - she's always got it covered. I didn't need to worry."

"Daddy. Tell me right now. Stop stalling." She levels him with a glare and he winces at her again.

"She's missed you," her father says slowly, his fingers coming up to tuck her hair back behind her shoulder. "She feels the distance, Ellery Kate."

"She said it didn't matter. Here or California. She said-"

"Not the physical distance, baby girl. The distance of the heart," he murmurs. And then her father - when did he get so _wise_? he was always just goofy and sweet and ridiclous - her father stands up and kisses her forehead and leaves her at the table.

She swallows hard but at least - at least that distance isn't there any longer. Right?

And here comes her mother and Allie, and Nick is sliding into the seat her father just vacated. Allie is beaming, a little too brightly for just a _congrats, kiddo_ and then her mother bites her bottom lip and settles into the seat at her other side.

"Ellery," she says slowly. "I have something for you. If you want it." Her mother glances back at Allie as if for _encouragement_ and Ella has never seen that.

Never.

"Is it another missing elephant?" she laughs, trying to ease the strange current flowing between them. Nick brushes his fingers over her knee and she glances back to him with a question.

He's just smiling at her.

It can't be that bad, right?

"Not an elephant. And actually, it's not mine to give anymore," her mother says with a little shake of her head.

Allie is grinning even wider and she leans against the back of their mother's chair. "It's mine to give, I guess. But it was my mother's first. And her mother's before that. And we've - all of us - passed it down a little prematurely. So it's fitting."

Ellery goes still, her heart pounding in her throat, and she watches her mother open her fisted hand, her fingers unfurling to display the ring.

Mommom's ring.

That Allie got first.

And now-

"This is for me?" she whispers.


	11. Chapter 11

** Everything That Glitters**

* * *

Ellery is wearing her mom's ring. Allie's ring. Mommom's ring. _The ring_. She remembers hearing stories about how Mom wore it on a chain around her neck until Dad took it off of her and presented it as an engagement ring, how he panicked later and wanted to do better but it took Allie getting engaged to get it off their mother's finger.

Of course, Ellery doesn't remember the time when her mother wore it, doesn't remember a time she hasn't worn the dual stoned band of blue and black - one for each of them. She's never thought to want it, never imagined wearing it because that one is her mother's ring. Not just for marriage, but for her promises to their family too. Ellery remembers sliding it on in church and watching the stones catch the lights overhead, the drowsy sense of words tumbling around her ears and the heavy feeling of too-early morning.

The blue-black ring is a thing between her parents, and also a testimony to Ellery and Dash together, and she can't imagine how it would ever fit on her own hand. It wouldn't.

But this one. This ring - the diamond and the gold band, the glitter of it - this is so much more. This is like a legacy. Papa's first wife wore this, it was on her hand when she first held Ellery's mother as a tiny baby, it was on her hand when she was murdered, and then it was given over like a promise to that Kate - twice. Once from Mommom as she left the world, and once from Ellery's father when he anchored her to it.

As her dad likes to say.

"You're staring at it," Nick murmurs in her ear.

She laughs and lifts her head to him. "I think I'm a little shell-shocked."

"Well, so is your mom. Look at her."

She scans the table and sees her mother with that cool and graceful smile in her eyes, light and easy, but she's not really with the table or the people at it; she's far away.

"Yeah," Ella says, swallowing it back. She turns her head and fiddles with the ring. "You don't mind-"

"No way. Less work for me. I'd never find you something even a tenth as good as that. And we don't really have the money to spend." He adds the last of it with a self-deprecating wince and picks up his wine glass, swirling the liquid around.

She feels herself leaning towards him. Something about them feels different now, but still the same. Oh, the way he said, _we don't really have the money_. Their money. The two of them together.

He's never said that before.

Has he been _thinking_ it, though? This whole time.

"I'm all for being cheap," she says with a little laugh.

He flushes hard - another blush that stains his cheeks and neck in a lovely pattern under the tan. She's never seen him blush before tonight and now that's at least twice.

"I don't mean - Elle, I'd buy you any ring you wanted. I'd borrow the money from my lousy father if I had to."

"You could just ask mine," she murmurs, lifting an eyebrow.

He flushes again and drops his head and she wonders - is this it? Is this why he couldn't ask her before? Because of the money? Because her parents are rich?

"You do know," she says quietly, "that my parents haven't paid for a thing since I cut out of here. When I was eightteen."

"Yeah, I know you think that."

"What?"

"They paid Meredith. Dash told me once."

"What?" she snaps, spine jerking her upright.

"Hey, whoa. Calm down."

She grits her teeth and narrows her eyes at him. "Do not _tell me_ to calm down. I _am_ calm."

"You don't sound calm-"

"I was calm until you said _calm down_. How patronizing can you be?"

"Whoa, whoa, okay. Um. Let's back up."

She glares at him, fury flickering hotly over the coals of something deeper.

"Elle, honey. Look. Just. Forget I said that. Let's go back to how they were sending Meredith money."

"They sent Aunt Mere money," she says flatly. She glances down the table to see her father laughing with Mia on his lap and she raises her voice. "Daddy. You sent Aunt Mere money?"

Her mother is the one who jerks to attention, eyes arrested on Ellery's; her father doesn't even seem to understand her question.

"Ellery Kate. Not here," her mother says, a lift of an eyebrow. But this time Ella sees pleading in it, not command. A request rather than a demand from her no-nonsense mother.

She takes a breath to insist but she feels Nick's grip at her elbow.

Allie is noticing their exchange, and she glances back and forth between them before leaning forward past her daughter's non-stop talk. "Wait. What was that?"

Allie didn't know. Did anyone know? Dad knew, right?

"Nothing," Ellery gets out, shaking her head. She offers her Hollywood smile becuase it's the only thing she can drag up - even though it makes Nick growl under his breath - and Allie just knits her eyebrows and tilts her head.

Her older sister knows there's something, but she doesn't know what.

"Just. Surprised," Ellery says in answer, then wriggles her fingers with the ring. Allie seems to accept that, or else Sophie has just gotten insistent, because she goes back to her daughter's next question and it's dropped.

But not for Ellery. She meets her mother's eyes down the table and Kate mouths, _later._

Oh yeah. Later is right.

* * *

But it's Dash who corners her not fifteen minutes later, trapping her in the kitchen as she refills her water. She's still irritated, unsettled by the things no one has seen fit to tell her all this time. Not just that apparently her parents were sending Aunt Meredith money to house Ellery, but also what a brat she was in high school, how she let it get in the way of her relationship with her family, how she assumed she was always on the outside but really - really - Ella put herself there.

Why didn't anyone _shake_ her and make her see?

Dash knocks his shoulder into hers as she's putting up the filtered water; it sloshes in the pitcher and she growls at him even as he grins back.

"You knew," she says as he leans against the counter.

"Yeah. I knew."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you spent the first year in LA with no job to speak of, interning at that studio for nothing, and you were deadset on not coming back."

"But Aunt Mere. . .I don't like Mom and Dad giving Aunt Mere money to what? Baby-sit me?"

"Cricket," she hears and turns around to see her father blocking the way. "Wasn't to baby-sit you. Meredith's not that responsible."

Ella sighs with a roll of her eyes, can't help the smile that breaks out on her face. "Dad."

"Promise it wasn't to baby-sit you. Just - you're my kid. And I wanted to support you in what you wanted to do."

"I wanted to do it on my own," she sighs, rubbing at her forehead.

"You did. Meredith just - when you went to her place, I had Kate - your mom - talk to her."

"Is that why she never made me pay her rent?" Ella says, sinking back against the counter. "I can't believe it. She said - oh, jeez - don't tell Allie, okay? She said she never did right by Alexis and she was making up for it - too late but better than never. I was her second chance to finally be a good mother."

Her father winces.

Dash winces.

Ellery groans and sinks down on her elbows on the counter. "Great."

"She _is_ an actress," her father supplies.

Dashiell snorts, trying not to laugh, and Ellery glares at him.

"Sorry, sorry. Not funny. It's not funny." He holds it in for another three seconds and then he's laughing, deeply, the rich sound filling the loft. "I'm sure the two of you had a meaningful and deep relationship-"

"You're so mean," she says, shoving on him. Her father sighs and wraps an arm around her shoulders, brings her back against his chest.

"Ella Kate."

She twists around to look at him and he's trying not to laugh. Smirking. All of them are-

Whatever. What. Ever. "And you told Nick? What, Dashy, it just slipped out?"

"Dashiell," her father sighs, narrowing his eyes.

"Oops."

She lunges for him again, but Dad holds her back; it's not that heartfelt anyway, and she figures she's twenty-three, and she's engaged, probably shouldn't be getting into fist fights with her brother, right?

And then Dash shrugs at her. "I thought he would've told you a while back."

She frowns at him, feels her father letting her go, his arm in a loose hold. But the three of them - it's been the three of them for so many things. A hundred dinners when Mom worked late. Laser tag battles. Swings in the park, the monkey bars. Hanging out at Black Pawn and playing hide and seek through the offices. Bookstores and restaurants and concerts.

She thought it went away somehow, that somewhere along the line it became the three of _them_ with her on the outside. Mom, Dad, and Dashiell. She's not sure why she thought that, why it had to ever be them versus her, why she never thought to worry about Mom feeling left out. And if Mom never did, why did Ellery?

"Well, Nick didn't tell me until just now," she says finally. "And why would you want him to?"

"I thought it would get you back here faster," Dashiell says with a shrug. "Before I had to leave."

Her mouth drops open; she feels like a stunt has gone wrong, the wind's knocked out of her.

Their father sighs and claps Dash on the back. "Kiddo, I appreciate the attempt to help, but you don't have to take up for us."

"Before you had to leave," Ellery says quietly. "Because tomorrow is Match Day and then you go-"

"Wherever they send me. Whichever hospital program wanted me."

"Dashiell," she groans, slipping her arms around her big brother. "Dash. You big idiot. You should have _said_ something."

"Well, now I am. You're my annoying little sister but I kinda like having you around."

"And now Nick and I are coming back, but it's too late."

"Not too late," her father interrupts. "Dash interviewed with a couple places here in the city."

"Will you get-"

"Probably not," Dash says with a dry chuckle. "Dad's being relentlessly optimistic. And I don't want to break up the family, so I told Shannon she should stay here. She's got a good job, Mom and Dad are here-"

"What about her family?" Ella frowns, glancing to her father. He called her _little bear._ What about Shannon's own family?

Her father shakes his head and Dash crosses his arms over his chest, answering Ellery's question. "Her family's not around."

Ooh, Mom said they weren't all that supportive, didn't she? There's a story there. She'll pry later.

"What are you guys doing?" she hears and here's Nick, bringing his plate and glass up to the kitchen sink. "Your mom sent me to find out under the pretense of cleaning up."

"Just getting the facts," Ella rolls her eyes. "Tell my mom we're cool."

"Will do," he laughs back at her. He leans in and kisses her cheek. "You're gonna be my wife," he whispers at her ear, a nudge against her jaw.

She reaches out and grasps his sleeve as he pulls away, gives him a smile. "Don't get cocky."

"Too late, honey. You already said yes."


	12. Chapter 12

**Everything That Glitters**

* * *

It's nearly one in the morning when Allie and Rafe leave with their kids and the loft quiets down again. Shannon and Dashiell aren't spending the night here, it turns out, so making up all the beds was for nothing. Ella wants to convince her brother to stick around, let them have an all-night slumber party upstairs like they used to do, camping out on the floor of her bedroom, but she can tell that's not going to happen. Apparently Dash has all but moved in with Shannon, and they're gathering up stuff to go.

Ella misses him before he even leaves. She wraps her arms around her big brother, squeezing tight enough to make him grunt.

"Choking me," he groans out.

"Whatever," she mutters. "This is how you like it. I remember."

He hugs her back finally, picking her up off her feet and then dropping her. "Glad you're back, Ellie."

"Me too."

"Am I gonna see you in the morning?" He's got that suddenly-shy smile on his face that always dazzled her as a little girl, made her want to do anything for him.

"Yeah. You're totally seeing me."

She hangs on the door knob as they walk down the hall hand in hand, Dash making some comment to Shannon and both of them smiling. Ellery gives a soft sigh and then she turns around to her parents and Nick, the three of them watching her as she stands in the entryway. She shuts the door.

"So. . .it's just us."

Her dad wriggles his eyebrows. "You guys are tired, I'm sure. Long flight. But - tomorrow, you up for a baseball game?"

"How is there baseball in March?" she laughs, rolling her eyes and moving towards the couch. She drops next to Nick and he puts his hand at her lower back, this thumb bumping over the ridge of her spine.

"It's an exhibition game," her mother says quietly. "And you don't have to-"

"Yes, you do," her father interrupts. "You have to."

Ellery startles with a laugh but then she remembers the half-conversation she overheard and the phone call from Shannon that started all of this. "Huh. Well."

She turns to Nick and he's grinning and shrugging his shoulders. "Sure. I know nothing about baseball, but always time to learn, right?"

"Man after my own heart," her father sighs out. Her mother rolls her eyes and stands up again, holding her hand out. Ellery's father takes it, lets Kate lift him from the couch, and then she turns back to them.

"Second floor is all yours. We'll see you in the morning."

"Game's at one, Cricket," her father says, a warning on his face. "So. . ."

She snorts. "I'll be up, Dad. I swear. Jeez."

"I know how you like to sleep in."

Nick gives her a startled look. "You like to sleep in?"

"Not any more," she mutters to him, knocking into his thigh with her knee to silence him. "Daddy, I'll be fine. I don't sleep in like that anymore. I have a job, you know."

"See," her mother murmurs. "I told you, Castle. She's a normal, functioning adult. Unlike yourself." She turns around and blows Ellery a kiss, a little wink as her father pouts over her mother's shoulder. "Good-night, baby girl. I'm glad you came home."

"Night, mama."

"Night, Nick. It was good to meet you."

"Meet you and have you become our future son-in-law just like that," her father says with a laugh. Nick is already standing up to shake his hand and say good night, and then her parents turn away, leaving them to it.

For a moment, the unfamiliar quiet in her childhood home is unbearable. Just the muted sounds of her parents moving down the hall to their room and her own psyche squirming within the confines of her body. She's really misunderstood so much, and now that her picture has been shifted, altered, she doesn't know where that leaves her.

So much of who she's become has formed because of what she thought she was leaving behind. Who does that make her when those impressions themselves were so false?

"You okay?" Nick says quietly.

She shrugs.

"You wanna tell me what all of that was about?" he says, his voice reverting to that calm and clear tone that always reminds her of her mother. That same no-nonsense, _don't even think of lying to me_ authority that Nick carries with him like a second skin. It's why he always seems to be at ease, why he _is_ so at ease.

His father shaped him more than he'd like, but in this way, it's to their benefit - both of theirs.

"I just - I don't know, Nick. Trying not to fall into old habits here," she says with a shrug, standing up now. She's suddenly so tired. "It's - I'm afraid I'll wind up being that girl I was when I left. I don't want to be her."

Nick stands with her and takes her hand, his fingers stroking over her own. The mad thump of her heartbeat pulses between their skins and he gives her a crooked, cocky smile.

"I don't want you to be that girl either. Prison bait."

She snorts and shakes her head. "I was eighteen when I left, you idiot."

"Oh, whew. Then go for it. Eighteen is hot."

She elbows him but starts leading him towards the stairs. "Me at eighteen was not hot. Hot mess maybe."

"No, I bet you were adorable."

"Not hardly. I snarled at everyone."

"Yeah, see? Adorable. You know what I like."

She rolls her eyes and starts up the stairs, Nick mounting the steps behind her. Their joined hands bump against her thigh and then she feels him doing it on purpose, stroking lightly, his fingers flaring out at her hamstring.

Ella turns at the top, watches him below her, both of them going still. She's smiling because he makes her smile; she can laugh at all because even when she's snarling, he's smoothing her out of it, cracking a joke, being snarky. He's not goofy like her father is, like Dash is as well, but he has a potent sense of humor, dry and deadly.

"Yeah," he murmurs, shaking off her hand to wrap his arms around her waist. "You don't have to worry, Elle. Your time in LA has made you strong in yourself; you know who you are. Look at how you held your own in the middle of that room."

She frowns, knitting her eyebrows together. "What do you mean?"

"You don't let anyone shield you. You stand and take it. You're fantastic. And that's how I knew I could ask."

Ellery leans into his embrace, rocking him back on the stairs, letting her weight settle against his shoulders. He's so fervent right now. She's never seen him so animated, so forceful about something before; he's always unruffled, so laidback and cool.

But not right now. The intensity in his face is transforming. And it's all about her.

"How you knew you could ask?" she repeats slowly, tilting her head at him.

"I got nothing for you, honey. No job, no place. No prospects. I'm asking you to quit a job you adore - that you're so amazingly good at - to move back to New York and jump into something that neither of us have any idea about."

"I'm do stunts for a living, Nick," she laughs a little, brushing a kiss at his cheek as she slowly circles her thumb at the nape of his neck. "Don't you think I'm used to jumping?"

"No, I don't. Because stunts are controlled. There are no unknown elements. Every second is planned out to the last detail. Which is why you're so crazy good at it. But what we're doing here requires staring down the darkness, standing tall and taking it. And tonight, Elle, you did that like an Amazon."

She chuckles softly at his ear and slides her body down against his, standing on the same step as Nick, brushing her cheek over the harsh scruff at his neck. "Amazon, huh?" She knows he's been doing research for that Amazon princess screenplay; he's been feeding her interesting facts for a month now, so the compliment actually hits home for her. She told Nick last week that he must be half in love with his Amazon princess.

"Yeah. A warrior. Fierce. Smart. Blazing," he sighs out at her mouth, his lips glancing over hers with each word. She feels her body unfurl to his, seeking.

He's never done this before, laid himself out there. He's complimented her and raved about her; he's always had the words. But never this, never touching on things so deep and intimate.

This is more. This is more because he saw something more in _her. _And he saw it tonight. Enough that he wants to marry her.

That _more_ happened only when she came home, when she melted down all the broken pieces of herself and began forging them together into some stronger stuff.

And even though she's not all the way there yet, Nick wants her anyway. He wants _this_ life for them, here in New York with her family too close for comfort and not knowing what in the world they'll even do.

She sighs out and closes her eyes, feeling his body taut and strong against her. "Thank you," she whispers against his mouth. She's not sure she's ever said it before, not to him; she's not sure she's ever meant it so very much. "Thank you for believing I can do it."

His kiss starts rough, like a knee-jerk reaction, and he grunts into her mouth as he pulls it all from her, the words they've still got trapped between them. And then he gentles, a sudden harsh breath against her cheek before sipping at her mouth, cradling her.

All because of her humiliating gratitude?

"I love you," he says suddenly, intense again as he presses his forehead to hers.

She grins and opens her eyes to see him breathing hard, his hands framing her neck, holding her there. "Hm, me too. Love you too."

"I wanna take you to bed," he murmurs. His fingers paint at her jaw, his kiss so soft now. The slide of his lips over hers makes her whole body frisson with pleasure.

She opens her eyes slowly when she realizes he's stopped. "What happened to bed?" she says archly.

He gives her a sly smile. "I do wanna take you to bed, but Elle, honey, I don't know which room is yours."

She laughs, all of it breaking open over her, and she cups his cheeks and kisses him hard. "I'll lead the way."

"What you do best."

"You'd do well to remember that."

* * *

**A/N:** Everything That Glitters will continue in a second installment - from the point of view of Dashiell - and be titled Everything That Glitters 2.


End file.
